Scramble for africa on deity

I think the whole point of these two achievements is to be challenging. Nice job by the devs IMHO. I for one am hooked on trying to finish these two...after I get back from vacation

Mesix said:

I think the whole point of these two achievements is to be challenging. Nice job by the devs IMHO. I for one am hooked on trying to finish these two...after I get back from vacation

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Some things...are too challenging
I didnt counted howmany time i pressed "load" or "new game" but it might be close to 200
But it seems to me how i need to build military units all the time with both cities till all cities which need to be killed done.

crocivfanatic said:

Ok this is getting absurd,first after like billions of attempts i finally get capetown.First what happen,portugal declare war exactly 3 turns after it.But then i remembered trick where if you declare war to 2 random civs(possibly enough even just one)then you postpone dow from anyone.But the problem is,after i got capetown,it was taken back very fast,and like that was not enough,all my units was suddenly killed,even both cities taken,suddenly it spawned tons of unites from nowhere.But hey atleast i found ethiopia with worker lol. But sugar on end is cant use portugal to do dow on etipioa as they didnt met it yet Anyway,to fix capetown problem,should i get rid of ship of lines first?There is like 6 of them.Or maybe i should move to german city first,or even english city which was made right above pretoria where i missed to kill settler.

I played this on map which was uploaded on other thread,and seems strategy of get in war with germany/england,bribe portugal to get in war with zulu works,but still doesn't mean how i will finish it.

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I finally got this but it is utterly chance, you have to just do really well on your end and pray someone up north keeps Italy and Etheopia under 6k. You won't know if one of them is a runaway until very late in the game (you will see one of their scores jumping 100-200 per turn while you get like 50-100).

Here's what I did, I hope it helps you:

Reroll till you have minimal flat desert land and maximum hills/grass land around the rivers, a nice mountain ridge dividing E/W or N/S is nice too.

Hug your first settler right up to Cape Town and DoW England before meeting anyone else.

Next city can vary but I put mine far west right in between CT and Germany. If you do this you will likely not have Zulu DoW on you.

As soon as you get your first GG (should be pretty fast) plant it right on top of the horses and start making a Calvalry in one city and a cannon in another. Use the cannon to take CT and Port Elizabeth. Meanwhile make another cannon in your capital and a caravan in your second city (send it to your capital for hammers).

Once you have both ports start pumping out Privateers, use any captured workers to chop out your first couple. If you take both of Englands cities fast enough (which you can do if you had your hills to get that cannon fast) then you shouldn't have to worry about their navy, after I took both her cities her ships took off, also don't worry about SotL as they can't retake a city only her privateers can. I did destroy Germany's boats though (2) as they are heavy hitters and can retake a city without help.

Now DoW Germany and take his city with your 2 cannons and cavalry, start making privateers there. The rest of the game just fight Zulu and Portugal on your borders while building up your wonders, keep all your writer/artist/musician guilds filled in your capital and use the other cities to create units and caravans (all internal production).

Using this method you should get around 6k, but unless someone up north stops E or I then you will need to make 7-8k. The games AI obviously do not play to win but instead fight among each other over petty issues, so count on playing about 10+ 8 hour games.

Things to remember:

.Use privateers wisely, weaken units with cities, cannons, and captured range units then swoop in with Privateers for the capture. Supposedly there is a 33ish percent chance of getting ironclads and variants thereof but in my experience its more like 10ish percent. If you fail to get it the first time try reloading and coming at it from a diff direction or using different combos to weaken it.

.Pillage... EVERYTHING... rebuild pillaged sites if you have a spare worker and pillage it again.

.Pillage trade routes, I was at -80 gpt at one point so I needed to pillage a TR every other turn to not go negative.

.If you get into a trade off situation with a city as you described then set up 3 cannons and a cavalry around it blast the city to nothing then use your cavalry to go in and out of the city, when they retake it they will put 1-2 units in it so when you retake it they lose those units and you lose nothing. This is actually a good thing as you get a good chunk of points every turn doing this. Raze and sell buildings each turn till its stripped then just puppet it.

.Place GG's very carefully to get maximum damage to enemy troops.

.Don't bother sending out scouts they will just get surrounded and murdered just keep rotating them back and healing them to be sent to the borders.

.Unit promotions, just grab whatever is most useful at the moment, with 100 turns you won't be getting logistics on every unit. I had 2 cannons at the end of mine with logistics and only for about 20 turns which didn't matter anymore. Only use the 50pt heal when absolutely necessary of course, but don't be to shy with it. With cannons past your first one I would just go for fortify and march.

.Build up your guilds fast and keep them filled, killing units will get you nice chunks of culture but don't help your points, only CPT goes towards your score.

.All the European civs take the policy that provides 3 settlers, if you see a civ has done this DoW them and snag all 3 of them. I ended up selling about 8 workers before turn 75 after building up my infrastructure.

Good luck.

Cyssero said:

While you're in the thread, do you have any advice for a general strategy as the Boers?

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This is a guy who started building a worker on Boer Deity I wouldn't ask him for advice

How I dealt with Portugal is grovel at their feet until you take out England and Germany. If they DoW you earlier than you are ready then reload as they will 300 vs jerksies you, sure you'll kill a million but there will be 50 million waiting to swarm in and eventually they will find a crack, then there's the cannons... Once you have those coastal cities and a nice navy of Privateers and captured English and German ships you can manhandle them.

Another reason you don't want to DoW Portugal is that they are the only real threat from the south to Ethiopia and really their only direct threat. Italy hates them but has to go through Ottomans AND Egypt to start whacking at them which takes about 60 turns. So you don't want Portugal sending all it's troops your way and leaving Ethiopia to run wild.

There is another enemy to the west of Ethiopia that you may never meet which also hate them but he is very weak I can't even remember his name.

I in my game I did take 4 Portugal cities but I it was more for fun than points, you don't get much from con-questing to far out, keep rotating and healing your troops.

This would be a really good scenario achievement if it was a close game every time, but it's not. Most every game you will have 1 guy up north beat everyone else by 2-3k that is simply poor deity design.

Yikes,what you saying is totally different what i had in mind.Anyway,i figured out how not to be dowed by zulu/portugal forever.You can either bribe portugal to dow on zulu,if they dont want too,then you can bribe england.What is awesome in when bribing england,you can declare war same turn,and then tag team with zulu against england,they will take port elizabeth very fast.What is awesome in that,you just need to wait till england retake it,and then shoot with cannons already deployed from before to take over.As portugal then itself declare war to zulu,they cant proceed to capetown which would be awesome as then it would be pretty easy to take it over,meaning it would be very fast.Still zulu managed to have port elizabeth for decent time.But i think that is not good as time when i zulu fallen and i took over port elizabeth it was too hard to defend it,and then germany start to attack from all sides which made another game fail(plus england attacking from above second city complicated as well).
And worse of all,if when i finally succeed with taking over capetown,it with still be no use as winning completely relay on that will someone attack ethiopia or not.I managed relative early to bribe Portugal to declare war to Ethiopia but for some reason they didn't bother to send a single unit to attack it.I think thanks to that portugal might never Dow you but as i didnt made it to end hard to know.

I must admit i completely forgot about hit and run cavalry,as with rifleman is impossible to win capetown,unless you pull citadel right on it plus sacrifice one rifleman.
So i am going to try again with same map on earlier load,will trying to take port elizabeth from zulu earlier.

And here is map which i played these days:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12665343&postcount=22
That is good map,maybe even best possible,as it have decent number of luxury resources,which allows you to always be in plus and not to bother with building bank or anything like that.
According to picture which he posted he attacked first port elizabeth,then capetown,and finally german city.
I'l try to also incorporate all those things which you said.

I didn't attacked their city till the end, I just built my culture when I can afford. That's why I have 9k points in the end.

This mid-game screenshot is from failed attempt(didn't go finding Ethiopia so got DoWed by Portugal) but see how I got #1 in T45.

crocivfanatic said:

Yikes,what you saying is totally different what i had in mind.Anyway,i figured out how not to be dowed by zulu/portugal forever.You can either bribe portugal to dow on zulu,if they dont want too,then you can bribe england.What is awesome in when bribing england,you can declare war same turn,and then tag team with zulu against england,they will take port elizabeth very fast.What is awesome in that,you just need to wait till england retake it,and then shoot with cannons already deployed from before to take over.As portugal then itself declare war to zulu,they cant proceed to capetown which would be awesome as then it would be pretty easy to take it over,meaning it would be very fast.Still zulu managed to have port elizabeth for decent time.But i think that is not good as time when i zulu fallen and i took over port elizabeth it was too hard to defend it,and then germany start to attack from all sides which made another game fail(plus england attacking from above second city complicated as well).
And worse of all,if when i finally succeed with taking over capetown,it with still be no use as winning completely relay on that will someone attack ethiopia or not.I managed relative early to bribe Portugal to declare war to Ethiopia but for some reason they didn't bother to send a single unit to attack it.I think thanks to that portugal might never Dow you but as i didnt made it to end hard to know.

I must admit i completely forgot about hit and run cavalry,as with rifleman is impossible to win capetown,unless you pull citadel right on it plus sacrifice one rifleman.
So i am going to try again with same map on earlier load,will trying to take port elizabeth from zulu earlier.

And here is map which i played these days:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12665343&postcount=22
That is good map,maybe even best possible,as it have decent number of luxury resources,which allows you to always be in plus and not to bother with building bank or anything like that.
According to picture which he posted he attacked first port elizabeth,then capetown,and finally german city.
I'l try to also incorporate all those things which you said.

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Am I just incredibly unlucky, or is everyone else actually able to bribe other Civs? I've tried multiple times to try and get Portugal/Zulu/England to DoW each other. I've even offered cities in exchange for making it happen and every time I get turned down. In all of my attempts to beat this scenario, I've never been able to convince anyone to DoW on someone else.

crocivfanatic said:

Yikes,what you saying is totally different what i had in mind.Anyway,i figured out how not to be dowed by zulu/portugal forever.You can either bribe portugal to dow on zulu,if they dont want too,then you can bribe england.What is awesome in when bribing england,you can declare war same turn,and then tag team with zulu against england,they will take port elizabeth very fast.What is awesome in that,you just need to wait till england retake it,and then shoot with cannons already deployed from before to take over.As portugal then itself declare war to zulu,they cant proceed to capetown which would be awesome as then it would be pretty easy to take it over,meaning it would be very fast.Still zulu managed to have port elizabeth for decent time.But i think that is not good as time when i zulu fallen and i took over port elizabeth it was too hard to defend it,and then germany start to attack from all sides which made another game fail(plus england attacking from above second city complicated as well).
And worse of all,if when i finally succeed with taking over capetown,it with still be no use as winning completely relay on that will someone attack ethiopia or not.I managed relative early to bribe Portugal to declare war to Ethiopia but for some reason they didn't bother to send a single unit to attack it.I think thanks to that portugal might never Dow you but as i didnt made it to end hard to know.

I must admit i completely forgot about hit and run cavalry,as with rifleman is impossible to win capetown,unless you pull citadel right on it plus sacrifice one rifleman.
So i am going to try again with same map on earlier load,will trying to take port elizabeth from zulu earlier.

And here is map which i played these days:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12665343&postcount=22
That is good map,maybe even best possible,as it have decent number of luxury resources,which allows you to always be in plus and not to bother with building bank or anything like that.
According to picture which he posted he attacked first port elizabeth,then capetown,and finally german city.
I'l try to also incorporate all those things which you said.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the strat I described is just the one I used, there are many many other ways to win but ALL of them rely on SOMEONE knocking Etheopia down to size. The reason I nuked England and Germany is to get a good chunk of culture to fill my policy trees and to only have 2 borders, if you think you can somehow work around all 4 DoWing you at the same time then go for it!

Just keep in mind that once you do start consistently getting to the finish that is only the beginning, after that you will have to play quite a few times all the way through and hope Ethiopia stays below 6-7k.

I never bribed anyone to do anything but I did ally a city state, what you suggest is probably better. Maybe wait till Portugal has quite a few cannons around turn 20 before sicking them on Ethiopia, but how did you even discover Ethiopia? Wasting a unit that early is kinda dangerous. I guess you sent a worker off but that also is a pretty big loss unless you took quite a few settlers from someone.

Keep in mind there is a direct threat to the West of Ethiopia also who you may want to get to dow them early too I keep forgetting his name but it's purple and yellow civ.

Keep us posted on how you're doing.

Cyssero said:

Am I just incredibly unlucky, or is everyone else actually able to bribe other Civs? I've tried multiple times to try and get Portugal/Zulu/England to DoW each other. I've even offered cities in exchange for making it happen and every time I get turned down. In all of my attempts to beat this scenario, I've never been able to convince anyone to DoW on someone else.

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I know, the only diplomatic tool I used was to denounce and DoW. The rest is just stupidly useless on Deity.

ggmoyang said:

I didn't attacked their city till the end, I just built my culture when I can afford. That's why I have 9k points in the end.

This mid-game screenshot is from failed attempt(didn't go finding Ethiopia so got DoWed by Portugal) but see how I got #1 in T45.

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Yep I see that now, great strat and kudos. I never even found Ethiopia but your way is much better.

Sweet success.

I got a pretty good spawn with a mountain range insulating me from anything north and settled my 2nd city in a spot that could be completely defended with 2 units. There wasn't any food though, and both of my cities were starving at first. One of my ships found an Ethiopian caravan heading to Mogadishu at around turn 60 and I went to work bribing everyone to attack. They were all pretty much willing except for Belgium.

With the way the territory was laid out, I could take both of the Zulu cities in 1 turn with 4 cannons and 2 foreign volunteers, but I wanted to get my Hermitage out before I made any more units and by the time it was done they had Impis lined all along my boarder so I could no longer take them out in one turn. I was going to DoW them anyways but I was outpacing Ethiopia on culture at this point so I just let them be. I also had to DoW Germany on turn 92 so they wouldn't bring England with them to start a war on me and got some free culture for killing their ships.

Has anyone managed to win as Morocco or the Ottomans by the way?

Cyssero said:

Has anyone managed to win as Morocco or the Ottomans by the way?

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The only guy I've seen do it so far used the infinite population cheat.

Regardless you will have to do some juggling with cities to get Italy to attack someone besides you until you can get a navy to take them out.

The good thing about Otto is that you are surrounded by friendlies, you will be friends with Egypt to your East, Ethiopia to your South, and the sand ninjas to your west. Once you nuke Italy and get your trade routes going good it should be doable.

The Boers achievement kinda burned me out so I'm moving on to Skyrim until TW: Rome comes out.

Cyssero said:

Sweet success.

I got a pretty good spawn with a mountain range insulating me from anything north and settled my 2nd city in a spot that could be completely defended with 2 units. There wasn't any food though, and both of my cities were starving at first. One of my ships found an Ethiopian caravan heading to Mogadishu at around turn 60 and I went to work bribing everyone to attack. They were all pretty much willing except for Belgium.

With the way the territory was laid out, I could take both of the Zulu cities in 1 turn with 4 cannons and 2 foreign volunteers, but I wanted to get my Hermitage out before I made any more units and by the time it was done they had Impis lined all along my boarder so I could no longer take them out in one turn. I was going to DoW them anyways but I was outpacing Ethiopia on culture at this point so I just let them be. I also had to DoW Germany on turn 92 so they wouldn't bring England with them to start a war on me and got some free culture for killing their ships.

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Wow thank's for sharing I have now seen 3 drastically different tactics, I managed to get a higher score and never met Ethiopia, but they got a much higher score also. With your tactic I could have won many games earlier by trying diplomacy more. I got discouraged trying to work with those three European civs and have them say "no" that I just dominated them and hope at least someone up north will play to win.

How much was it to bribe others to war with Ethiopia? How long did they stay at war with them? Why couldn't you get old Pia to war them? Not enough money what? why didn't you just take out cape town and Germany?

Grats!

elijahfire said:

The only guy I've seen do it so far used the infinite population cheat.

Regardless you will have to do some juggling with cities to get Italy to attack someone besides you until you can get a navy to take them out.

The good thing about Otto is that you are surrounded by friendlies, you will be friends with Egypt to your East, Ethiopia to your South, and the sand ninjas to your west. Once you nuke Italy and get your trade routes going good it should be doable.

The Boers achievement kinda burned me out so I'm moving on to Skyrim until TW: Rome comes out.




Wow thank's for sharing I have now seen 3 drastically different tactics, I managed to get a higher score and never met Ethiopia, but they got a much higher score also. With your tactic I could have won many games earlier by trying diplomacy more. I got discouraged trying to work with those three European civs and have them say "no" that I just dominated them and hope at least someone up north will play to win.

How much was it to bribe others to war with Ethiopia? How long did they stay at war with them? Why couldn't you get old Pia to war them? Not enough money what? why didn't you just take out cape town and Germany?

Grats!

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It was really cheap to bribe people to go to war with Ethiopia. Usually something like 5 gpt or 5 iron for 30. I did get Portugal to go to war with them, it was Belguim who never would for some reason, no matter how much I offered him. I had 7 trade routes for a good portion of the game so I had a ton of gold coming in, that definitely wasn't an issue. I'd say on average most of the civs stayed at war with Ethiopia for about 20 turns.

I honestly couldn't take out Cape Town. My capital and second city were both starving the moment I dropped them down, and I only had one hill in my capital. By the time I got my first cannon out, there was already a cannon in Cape Town and there was still a rifleman and a cavalry down there. I could have take it if I had my other cannon from my second city, but the British settled a city to my west and the Zulus were to my east, so I was boxed in and couldn't get that cannon down to help.

Cyssero said:

It was really cheap to bribe people to go to war with Ethiopia. Usually something like 5 gpt or 5 iron for 30. I did get Portugal to go to war with them, it was Belguim who never would for some reason, no matter how much I offered him. I had 7 trade routes for a good portion of the game so I had a ton of gold coming in, that definitely wasn't an issue. I'd say on average most of the civs stayed at war with Ethiopia for about 20 turns.

I honestly couldn't take out Cape Town. My capital and second city were both starving the moment I dropped them down, and I only had one hill in my capital. By the time I got my first cannon out, there was already a cannon in Cape Town and there was still a rifleman and a cavalry down there. I could have take it if I had my other cannon from my second city, but the British settled a city to my west and the Zulus were to my east, so I was boxed in and couldn't get that cannon down to help.

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Gotcha I got Belgium and Portugal mixed up How long did they generally stay at war with Ethiopia just the minimum 10 turns or longer? Like if you bribed them with GPT would they stay at war as long as you gave them the GPT or just the minimum?

Did you sick everyone on Zulus at the beginning till you found Etheopia? I found that when I allied Zulu they got ran over so easily they may as well not even have been there. Or if I tried to ignore everyone they would all attack at once, so I just decided to minimize my enemy presence.

Yeah I am looking at your start and I noticed that it is pretty horrible in spite of having that northern buffer you have nothing but desert eek. Whenever I dropped a city in an unproductive spot I would make sure I could buy a tile or two to get enough food, I guess this wasn't an option for you.

To be honest if you can keep E/G/P off your back I'd just stick with 2 cities, 4 is ideal but the effort getting them in a 100 turn game isn't worth it.

elijahfire said:

Gotcha I got Belgium and Portugal mixed up How long did they generally stay at war with Ethiopia just the minimum 10 turns or longer? Like if you bribed them with GPT would they stay at war as long as you gave them the GPT or just the minimum?

Did you sick everyone on Zulus at the beginning till you found Etheopia? I found that when I allied Zulu they got ran over so easily they may as well not even have been there. Or if I tried to ignore everyone they would all attack at once, so I just decided to minimize my enemy presence.

Yeah I am looking at your start and I noticed that it is pretty horrible in spite of having that northern buffer you have nothing but desert eek. Whenever I dropped a city in an unproductive spot I would make sure I could buy a tile or two to get enough food, I guess this wasn't an option for you.

To be honest if you can keep E/G/P off your back I'd just stick with 2 cities, 4 is ideal but the effort getting them in a 100 turn game isn't worth it.

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It really varied with how long people would stay at war with Ethiopia. Portugal was at war with them for 40 of the last 50 turns. Germany was at war with them for at least 25 turns, England only lasted 10 or so before I had to rebribe them, and they made peace again pretty quickly. Italy might have made it 15 turns.

The great thing about the map I spawned on was that I was a complete buffer between the Zulu and the British, who usually roll over them after I took Port Victoria. The Zulu actually did a great job fending off Portugal as most of their attention was with Ethiopia, and as you can see in my screenshot the Zulu actually took Portugal's southernmost city on the east coast by the end of the game. I never bribed anyone to go to war with them. Portugal was at war with them for quite a bit of the game and so was England, but England had no way to get troops over there since I never game them open boarders so it was really a declaration with absolutely no real response.

Cyssero said:

It really varied with how long people would stay at war with Ethiopia. Portugal was at war with them for 40 of the last 50 turns. Germany was at war with them for at least 25 turns, England only lasted 10 or so before I had to rebribe them, and they made peace again pretty quickly. Italy might have made it 15 turns.

The great thing about the map I spawned on was that I was a complete buffer between the Zulu and the British, who usually roll over them after I took Port Victoria. The Zulu actually did a great job fending off Portugal as most of their attention was with Ethiopia, and as you can see in my screenshot the Zulu actually took Portugal's southernmost city on the east coast by the end of the game. I never bribed anyone to go to war with them. Portugal was at war with them for quite a bit of the game and so was England, but England had no way to get troops over there since I never game them open boarders so it was really a declaration with absolutely no real response.

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Great information and hopefully it will help those going through it later on! Thanks for your help!

elijahfire said:

The only guy I've seen do it so far used the infinite population cheat.

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What's the infinite population cheat?

jkg777 said:

What's the infinite population cheat?

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The cheat where you get infinite population...

I suppose i should chim in as well.It is just crazy how you can go do this with different methods,and also howmany times i though "i finally got it,i gonna win"and then next few turn being completely overrun.But atleast i finaly made some progress - i won both port elizabeth and capetown.To get port elizabeth,you first need to get zulu to attack it(by bribing england to declare war on zulu)then declare war to england,set a cannon and rifleman above port elizabeth(rifleman should go right above field where it can attack city in one turn)so you can take over port elizabeth.Then to take over capetown,make two citadels right from capetown,so you can have view to city so no need for cavalry then,and also to damage infantry in case they try to attack port elizabeth(which will have zero shield then due being attacked from ship of lines).So then positioning of army is also important,i managed to set two cannons in line,and "convince" england cannon to hit infantry instead cannon which is good since infantry with his better defense cant take hits without problem. So then i finally took capetown then,but that didnt ended problems in game.First problem was,my second city was immediately overrun by england force from north,so to resolve that problem first i gave it to zulu(zulu paid +20 gold per turn for it lol),and then portugal took it over from zulu,which serve as buffer from england as then they were only attack from sea(before when they won city they overuned pretoria as well).So i resolved that problem,then successfully was defending on sea from england,and england even offered peace which i accepted.So i though then how i will be able to fully concentrate on culture but unfortunately seems that did not work.
First problem is again ethiopia-despise the fact how i managed to bribe ALL European civilization to declare war to them,it seems that is some sort of bad idea as ethiopia gets culture for kills,and only Italy and Germany actually managed to took over their cities(3 at the moment).Another problem is how they go into peace after 10-20 turns,so it almost making it almost useless to bribe other civs to get into war,so it might be enough to bribe just germany and italy.And second problem,is getting war declared from germany and belgium-seems they both got decent navy army and seems to it's not possible to defense capetown indefinitely,you just must let them have it and then take over it(which is not a problem as i have like 4 cannons).While waring with belgium/germany is more less doable,following is total killer:
dow from portugal and again from england.Fighting against portugal there is no sense,as they have millions of units right above pretoria.Against england i might be able to do it alone,but not sure against them, belgium and germany.So what i going to try,when Dow turn will be close,to declare war against belgium/germany(that will postpone portugal/england dow for some turns)and then when next dow turn arrives,bribe them(portugal/england) then to go against etiophia(instead before as i did now),that should do a trick.But despise all those steps Ethiopia might still have toomuch score.Also i realy dont understood how did ggmoyang got cities to level 27,i think i barely reached level 14 on pretoria.

crocivfanatic said:

I suppose i should chim in as well.It is just crazy how you can go do this with different methods,and also howmany times i though "i finally got it,i gonna win"and then next few turn being completely overrun.But atleast i finaly made some progress - i won both port elizabeth and capetown.To get port elizabeth,you first need to get zulu to attack it(by bribing england to declare war on zulu)then declare war to england,set a cannon and rifleman above port elizabeth(rifleman should go right above field where it can attack city in one turn)so you can take over port elizabeth.Then to take over capetown,make two citadels right from capetown,so you can have view to city so no need for cavalry then,and also to damage infantry in case they try to attack port elizabeth(which will have zero shield then due being attacked from ship of lines).So then positioning of army is also important,i managed to set two cannons in line,and "convince" england cannon to hit infantry instead cannon which is good since infantry with his better defense cant take hits without problem. So then i finally took capetown then,but that didnt ended problems in game.First problem was,my second city was immediately overrun by england force from north,so to resolve that problem first i gave it to zulu(zulu paid +20 gold per turn for it lol),and then portugal took it over from zulu,which serve as buffer from england as then they were only attack from sea(before when they won city they overuned pretoria as well).So i resolved that problem,then successfully was defending on sea from england,and england even offered peace which i accepted.So i though then how i will be able to fully concentrate on culture but unfortunately seems that did not work.
First problem is again ethiopia-despise the fact how i managed to bribe ALL European civilization to declare war to them,it seems that is some sort of bad idea as ethiopia gets culture for kills,and only Italy and Germany actually managed to took over their cities(3 at the moment).Another problem is how they go into peace after 10-20 turns,so it almost making it almost useless to bribe other civs to get into war,so it might be enough to bribe just germany and italy.And second problem,is getting war declared from germany and belgium-seems they both got decent navy army and seems to it's not possible to defense capetown indefinitely,you just must let them have it and then take over it(which is not a problem as i have like 4 cannons).While waring with belgium/germany is more less doable,following is total killer:
dow from portugal and again from england.Fighting against portugal there is no sense,as they have millions of units right above pretoria.Against england i might be able to do it alone,but not sure against them, belgium and germany.So what i going to try,when Dow turn will be close,to declare war against belgium/germany(that will postpone portugal/england dow for some turns)and then when next dow turn arrives,bribe them(portugal/england) then to go against etiophia(instead before as i did now),that should do a trick.But despise all those steps Ethiopia might still have toomuch score.Also i realy dont understood how did ggmoyang got cities to level 27,i think i barely reached level 14 on pretoria.

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Maybe he used internal food caravans, you don't need to take any cities but you will have to be a more eloquent negotiator than I will ever be apparently. I played again to see and I managed to get Egypt to dow Ethiopia but Portugal refused and it just turned into a huge melee.

The calvalry are used to take cities not as scouts, they can take a city and get out the same turn, no other unit can do this unless they have double strike which they won't until late game.

Cyssero said:

I got a pretty good spawn with a mountain range insulating me from anything north and settled my 2nd city in a spot that could be completely defended with 2 units.

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Any chance you still have the initial save of this start that you could post?

Thanks.