The Deity Challenge Line-up #28 - Russia

Starting out, I had some vague idea of going for domination and building enough tanks to bankrupt my economy, but I couldn't not play the salty start for culture. A combination of the Liberty vs. Tradition thread and a desire to play Russia for Order led me to use a strategy I haven't played in a while, and I don't think I've ever used it above Emperor with anyone other than Brazil and Polynesia. So I went full Liberty, ignored Tradition entirely, and won with early Archeologist/Museum spam instead of Wonder whoring. Actually, it wasn't that early or very spam-like this map because I went for too many Wonders and I was embroiled in a significant war right when I wanted to go full Indiana Jones, but no one else spammed early this game so it worked out. This start was forgiving enough to cover up for me not feeling too sure about all of my decisions, and my general gameplay is much stronger than the last time I tried this on Deity so I still won.

I opened scout/scout/shrine/monument/scout/6 settlers. The last scout was because I hit two archer upgrades and brought one of the originals home to kill barbs, plus a quick delay got me to 5 pop after hitting a timely pop ruin. I was able to build settlers in 3 turns each once the tile improvements were complete. I was still too slow, with Hiawatha settling near Lake Victoria on turn 25 before I finished my first settler. I plopped down my city 4 tiles away and bought the Lake. I might have expanded to 8 cities just for giggles, but on turn 48 I got a “making cities too aggressively/covet lands” double DOW from Hiawatha and Pocatello. I probably could have taken a couple cities from Hiawatha, considering they were 10-13 strength and my odd pot shot did some real damage, but Pocatello was apparently the instigator and actually brought an army to the party. The terrain was very defensible, and after I carved up his attack force I got a nice peace deal to help make up any ground I lost.

I didn't get any early worker steals other than from a CS, but the double DOW allowed me to successfully enslave a large workforce in time to have tiles ready when I switched to growth after I built aqueducts. Barbs were really helpful this game, and I got a ton of CS influence freeing captured workers. In general, I had good CS quests but got jammed up with bad WLTKD and spy craft luck.

I had the Liberty finisher timed for a turn 72 something, but Petra was gone and I only needed 10 turns to build the NC, so I sat on it until the Renaissance and snagged Sistine with it. That was the only Wonder I didn't get beat to until Eifel Tower, with Shaka beating me to LToP by 4 turns and messing up my Uffizi rush gambit. I didn't have any happiness issues due to solid lux trading and early mercantile CS alliances. I put 3 policies into Aesthetics, finished Liberty, 2 into Rationalism, then finished Aesthetics and added Order. I didn’t pick any direct tourism boosters, but I leveraged the factory build speed to keep up production in my expos and the science boost to justify skipping labs in most cities. The production boosts helped across the board, as did the easy happiness.

It was almost turn 90 when I finished the NC, but I still got Education on turn 107. At that point, I had 7 cities all equipped with aqueducts, workshops, and coliseums. I bought 2 unis and built the rest. I mostly bought in the capital only to keep it ticking along on expensive wonders, national and otherwise. I focused my gold on tile purchases and city-state happiness, hard-building almost everything.

Things were really humming along when Pocatello declared war a second time on turn 148, and I nearly lost a city. The ungrateful jerk didn't realize I had kept Shaka from rolling him by blocking with spare workers/units, but once he trolled me with a city I didn't see coming (he ninja'd the settler into position via water) we were on a war trajectory. I had to rush buy walls and a castle to survive, and things were dicey until my scattered army arrived at the point of attack. I lost all of my existing melee units. The fallout was I didn't time up Oxford, finish my schools before I had to switch over to the World's Fair, spam archeologists effectively, or a whole bunch of other things that would helped me finish this game much sooner. After stealing one of my cultural CS allies early, Venice did a number on me by stealing one of my mercantile CS's in the middle of the war. The same turn, Pocatello rolls the other cultural CS. Suddenly I'm at -12 happiness (I was tight anyway due to not getting ideology happiness when expected) with rebels in Red Square while the Red Army was busy setting up fire-traps for Pocatello's muskets. I was able to hold the lines and recover, but I lost a lot of momentum and took white peace when offered. I lost over 10 turns of growth to unhappiness, and had to stay on production tiles for a while afterwards until I had some breathing room. I was left in a place where Oxfording the Internet seemed like the strongest play, so that’s what I did. After all of the war and happiness shenanigans, I ended up with the Internet on turn 203.

Shaka went Autocracy after me, then Hiawatha followed me into Order. After that, Freedom was the flavor of the month because Theodora had a big early influence lead on me. My guild timing was relatively late compared to my usual Tradition games, but I made up for it with artifacts and blew past her. I flipped Shaka to Order before the game ended, so it was a hard Freedom/Order divide. I had 7 DOFs going to end the game, but my relationships were strained because of it.


Once I had the Internet, NVC, won the IG, and rushed airports the next turn, the hardest part was getting my GMs into place. India and Byzantium were the runaways, and I got a pair of GMs mired in CS's before I took a step back and figured out that 20% of 4 GM's would bring Gandhi in line sooner than watching my GMs do nothing for turn after turn while surrounded by CS units. It's a little late to mention this, but I got a solid internal religion going with DF, Tithe, Happy Temples, StP, and RT. The wide play steam-rolled into enough faith for 3 GMs. I popped a 4th naturally, and immersed Byzantium in Russian culture to get at India by proxy. I could have sold a city and finished in the 220-230 range, but I save that for desperate situations. You’ll see the Louvre is in my final screen shots, but the Exploration opener was one of my last policies and that was built after turn 220. I added the PT around T210 too, and almost all of the late game Wonders were built by me in the last few turns or under construction in various cities. If the game had gone longer, I had a good shot at having 6 self-founded cities with Wonders in them.

My final thought is that I strongly dislike Pocatello… a lot.

That starting spot is quite insane!

I was very happy at turn 50 with this amazing start, thinking I could pick any VC and do whatever I wanted. Then, during just ten or so turns, the Shoshone and Iroquise completely boxed me in. I had settled 3 cities by that time, just barely beating the Shoshone where I settled my third, but I felt that my fourth city location north of Moscow would be safe...

I was wrong, he settled it a couple of turns later, and I basically had no way to settle even a crappy fourth city with the Iroquise settling almost all the way up to Venice in the west, and the Shoshone completely surrounding me in the east and north. I found I'd just do a 3-city science victory, since I recognized the extremely strong start, and I had the two cultured city states as my allies and was far ahead on social policies.

I found the Shoshone was going to attack shortly after and bribed Shaka to attack them, but when they made peace I had no way to stop him from attacking me. Luckily I was friends and/or allies with Belgrade almost all through the game, and managed to defend myself decently when wars came my way up to turn 170 or so, but it was quite a struggle for some time, since I couldn't find anyone other than Shaka to attack the Shoshone until the lategame.. One problem, though, was that the Shoshone stole a lot of land around my capital with citadels, which hurt me quite a bit in the lategame when running out of tiles to work.

After turn 170 or so I had peace all the way, and pit everyone in the world against eachother, but my cultured allies were both overtaken by my enemies in the wars a bit earlier, so I lost out big time on culture. That led me to into a huge stall when trying to get tenets, and I had a really hard time just getting the Freedom 3rd tier tenet to buy the spaceship parts. Because I was so unsure how long the game would last i chose it too early and missed out on extra science from universities and trading posts, which probably hurt my finishing time by at least 15 turns since I burned 14 or 15 GS's post that. I also made other mistakes after turn 200 or so, so I'm sure I could've done this sub 250 - which is far ahead of my best science victories with 4+ cities, especially if I had the cultured city states to finish rationalism.

In conclusion I felt I learned a lot from playing this map, and it was really enjoyable up to the "next turn" part the last 40-60 turns. I realize that after I got boxed in so badly at a very early stage (I see some other players on this map didn't have the same problem at all) I should have changed my priority from the science path to crossbows and warring my neighbours. It would have made it a more fun game for me and since the AI also had great starts, it would be a very strong challenge as well.

Thanks for the great map.

- prod

Workers - 1 Build + 3 City State + 2 Barb Camps
Got pantheon but couldn't get a religion, AI in this map went crazy faith on me.
Tradition + Rationalism + Commerce (up to mercantilism) + Freedom ideology
4 City NC (74)
Oracle (84)
Education (97)
Pisa (136)
Scientific Theory (141)
Porcelain Tower (147)
Big Ben (164)
World Fair 1st place (168)
Plastics (171)

From plastics to end, it took me 43 turns. Did not plant any academy, use one GS on scientific theory and one on plastic. Maybe I should skip bulbing scientific? It was 6 turns to get scientific in my game, and I had the money to buy building, not sure if I should have save the GS for endgame and just wait 6 turns.

After plastic I went the penicillin route to get the 2 extra trade route, I also sign 5 research agreements with AI right after plastic .. these RA came in at the end game, not much but every little bit helps. Bought 2 GS with faith.

3 city start with liberty then 2 more after NC.All was going great till Hywatha decided to Dow me around 210,at this time I was allied with all but the Shoshone,most of the Cs left,the zulu where gone and I had 10 GS ready to bulb for a science victory,got my first pick at freedom after buying 3 factories.Took most of his cities ,followed by Marocco ,bring back the Zulus,wiped the Shoshones .Got nukes at this time and i realized I have already th 36 votes needed for the diplo Victory in 9 turns so I laid back and spare the last three as Venice stayed friend with me the all time providing me with a lot of gold.Great game