Early Game Fail...But Can I Still Win?

Don't Call It A Comeback

The fat lady has exited stage left. My Ottomans have been bruised, beaten, and had their teeth kicked in but they refuse to go down for the count.

My only tool for survival, the Ottoman Imperial Navy, has become my single mystical weapon of destruction that I'm bringing down upon my enemies. My navy won two decisive victories for my empire which reversed our collapsing fortunes.

Clad in Iron
Portugal remained obsessed with conducting a naval invasion of my continent from the continent she shares with the Byzantines. She ruled the high seas with her air power forcing me back into the waters near my coasts. Armed with Iron Clads, Privateers, and Riflemen, Portugal set sail for my continent. Her airpower gave her false confidence as she left the range of her bombers.

As Portugal approached my coasts, my eastern navy swarmed her ships. My Frigates pounded her Ironclads to near death before for my Privateers swooped in and captured them. Portugal watched in abject horror as her navy became my navy. As my newly commandeered ships trained their Ironclad guns on her ships containing soldiers, Portugal could only watch in horror as thousands died in a fiery ocean of death and destruction. Portugal offered peace.

Indian Thunder
Ghandi refused peace so I set my ten Frigates and two Privateers upon his neighboring coastal city with a vengeance. The city had been a staging point for the invading hordes that had obliterated by capital. This was the bulk of my Imperial Navy, and it was crewed by thousands who had lost family in the destruction and occupation of Istanbul. There was no mercy.

The canons unleashed a black thunderstorm of cannonballs and shot upon the Indian city for three turns. Captured Indian citizens would later report that the sun itself was blacked out by the storm of firepower. Highly trained and equipped Indian Great War infantry were no match for the onslaught. The city was reduced from Pop 17 to Pop 8 as my troops marched in.

Ghandi begged for peace. With a snear, I gave it to him. A massive caravan of gold and luxuries were sent to me from India as terms.

The Indian city gave me my third factory allowing me to choose an ideology. The world's superpowers - Greece, Portugal, and Venice were all following Freedom. The vast majority of civilizations were following Order. Only India and Siam were Autocracies. I had a decision to make but I still faced a pesky war with Greece.

Korea finally declared war on Greece. Korea and I have remained friends throughout my wars. Korea had been gobbling up his neighbors but he was now bumping up against Greece. Fierce rivals, war between the two was inevitable.

You would think a war with a highly advanced Korea would make Greece reconsider his stalled efforts at attacking me and my Silver Citadel. Apparently, Alex has not yet received the news that I made peace with Portugal and India. Or he is an abject fool.

In any event, Greece refuses to even consider peace. So I continue to lure him up against my Silver Citadel and butcher his Riflemen with Gatling Guns. The men firing the Gatling Guns also lost family when India and Greece sacked my capital, and they've assured me that they could bathe the southern jungles in Greek blood for the rest of eternity.

As I looked out across my empire from my repaired Palace in my Pop 4 capital, I weighed my options. If I pursued Freedom, I could ally myself with the world superpowers and probably achieve a lasting peace with Greece. If I pursued Order, I would strengthen my relationship with Korea and the majority of world's civs. Autocracy put me in league with two oddballs. My choice was clear.

I chose Autocracy.
 
my first time following others into a ideology (not being first to get one) was terrible, I chose Autocracy, but everyone else was either Order or Freedom and I guess the freedom guy had a lot of tourism pressure because I lost 10 happiness right away and started getting rebels on my land very quick. I quickly learned my lesson, revolution to Freedom and lost two civics because of it.

Ps. keep up the story. very entertaining for me while at work dreaming of CiV
 
Awesome story :D
Makes me want to start a single player game right now!
 
Remarkable storytelling! This is the most inspiring Civ story Ive ever read. It makes me so mad at all the times I've given up. If you win, I hope this goes down in civ history.
 
They should put this story into the game as a 'Great Work'. :D I can't wait to see how it ends.
 
Thanks all! I think part of what is making this game so epic for me is my refusal to quit and start a new game. I have been tempted to restart so many times. It happened again last night.

Death to the King!
Autocracy didn't do me any favors. I went from +4:c5happy: to -27:c5angry:. My people did not like the new course of government. In fact, protesters in Vienna informed me that if I did not respect their demands in 5 turns, they would cede from my empire and join their ethnic Austrian brethren in Monty's empire.

The discord spread across my military. My forces were fighting at -40% effectiveness due to the turmoil. It was time to end the war with Greece and pull back. We settled on an even peace and the Imperial Navy retreated to our coastal waters for resupply and repair. Greek troops ended their shelling of the Silver Citadel.

This seemed to be the beginning of the darkest hour for the Ottoman empire. Vienna was almost finished constructing the empire's second National College (the first was destroyed during the sacking of Istanbul). Losing Vienna would be a crushing blow. My advisors strongly recommended I allow my citizens to elect their representatives or form a committee that has decision making power.

But my empire didn't last this long by letting subordinates second guess my decisions. I doubled down on Autocracy. I brought in new luxuries and established new trade routes to buy off the middle class. I cracked down on heresy and purchased new religious buildings to occupy the religious minded.

A revolt broke out in the rural areas near my Zulu city. Led by a young, charismatic ethnic Zulu man, his revolution took local authorities by surprise. His revolutionaries began destroying critical empire infrastructure, and he sought nothing less than the complete overthrow of the empire.

Government forces began shelling his positions and destroyed one of his units. His other two units moved towards the Silver Citadel. He appears intent on engaging government forces.

Unhappiness has dropped to -16:c5angry:. I believe I've undercut the student opposition in Vienna enough to prevent secession. Now I must work on my security apparatus to improve my control of the empire.
 
Go for those Happiness policies in Autocracy. (Fortified borders will be good since you want defense in your cities anyways)
Although Industrial Espionage will also help... good for spying on the Freedom people (Ordered Korea might have the anti-stealing tenet)
*guess it depends if you feel happiness or technology is more critical*

(you have full trees in Piety and Exploration.. and Autocracy open.. any other policies?)

As for the Ideological Unhappiness... to the limited degree that you can choose whose cities to attack focus on cultural leaders of Freedom or Order.
So probably Freedom (since Korea is your friend so far?).. ie Greece/Portugal/Venice (although Greece seems the bigger threat)..
you can reduce their Tourism+Culture by taking Wonders/Works from them... reducing the pressure that civ is putting on you
AND
you can increase your Tourism+Culture by getting their Wonders/Works..reducing the pressure ALL civs are putting on you.
 
I would like for you to know that I have been crawling on these forums for about 2 years, never did I create an account or made any posts of my own.

However reading this post made me want to make an account just so that I can post how enjoyable this thread has been.

I really enjoy reading your progress and I am not ashamed to admit that when I got home I started a large map single player game all because of this thread :p

Keep it coming! Cant wait to see your future threads
 
Thank you KrikkitTwo and mrs0X!!! The compliments really fuel my writing!

The Revolutionary Wave Spreads
Government forces defeated the ethnic Zulu uprising and captured their young terrorist leader. Utilizing innovative interrogation techniques, government agents learned that the ideals spurring the revolution had been spread to ethnic Ottoman students in my second and third production cities, Edirne and Ankara. Damned fools!

The student terrorists did not have the strength of the Zulu uprising but nevertheless managed to destroy an important Manufactory near Ankara before being eliminated by shelling from the Imperial Navy and a ground attack by Anakara's aging Janissaries.

I decided to divert critical Imperial resources into Industrial Espionage. My science was an era behind the rest of the world and I needed to close the gap as quickly as possible. My military advisor recommended we invest in Fortified Borders. I agreed that this was important but the empire currently lacked the Castles, Arsenals, and Military Bases to fully utilize the benefits of Fortified Borders. We needed to build the infrastructure first.

The advice from my military advisor was good. The problem was it was too good. He knew far too much about the current state of Ottoman defenses. I had him jailed on espionage charges based on his marriage to an ethnic Belgian woman. I doubted the bootlicker had anything to do with any foreign espionage but I needed to broadcast a clear message that no one was above the scrutiny of the Emperor.

The advisor's wife was also a Catholic, so I used the incident to purge my annexed Belgian city of Antwerp of all Catholics. There I built a Pagoda to honor the majority empire religion of Judaism. This seemed to take some of the wind out of the revolutionary sails, but I wasn't out of the woods yet. My security apparatus reported that more uprisings were being planned.

My treasury was finally back in the black. I decided to let the sciences flourish as the empire researched new ways to kill our enemies. I have heard rumors of a devastating weapon called Artillery, that can destroy enemies at a great distance. I needed to get my hands on that weapon!
 
It seems like Judaism makes for a really good religion
(definitely for your military production centers)
everywhere else depends on pantheons, etc.
(plus the Holy city is no longer in the founders control? since celts were squashed.. so noone else gets benefits)

sounds really interesting
 
Great thread. It seems that the vast majority of Let's Plays/AARs are in video form nowadays, which I find a shame; game accounts like this are instructive and entertaining, with or without screenshots.
 
Amazing! I would've love to see what the desolation at the Zulu city looked like, but the imagination and the story is satisfying!
 
Great thread! I don't think I would have the bravery to go on after all the setbacks you have had. Would be brilliant if you win this one.
 
A win would be amazing.

What I see as more likely is being in a strong position, but beat to the finish line.

But I'm hoping for a Win.... as the Turks get a larger and larger faith driven naval empire.
 
If you opened Piety and didn't found a religion you are doing something wrong.

The quote here is spot-on. Unless you are virtually guaranteed to get a religion all the way from turn 1 (primarily thinking Ethiopia, here), it may not be a great idea to go Piety first. If it's that important, you can always back-track to Piety later, and moreover, the happiness from going either Honor, Liberty, or Tradition is usually very much needed.

The only other time I might rush Piety first is if I spot a near-by faith wonder and am almost certain of settling it with no problems. Otherwise, I really don't do it unless I have a civ that has a boost to faith somehow. And the Ottomans don't get any boost to faith, so, unless you had a religious natural wonder, then Piety first (or even at all) might not have been the best option.
 
The Heart Pounding, Epic Conclusion

That's the title I wanted to post anyway. Unfortunately, the conclusion was neither heart pounding nor epic, but it should provide some fun analysis anyway. So without dragging out the conclusion of the game in a wall of text, I'll tell you how it ended.

I lost.

I didn't exactly fail at what I was trying to do though. My megalomaniacal tyrant managed to survive and hold on to his Autocratic empire to the very end which happened at around 2016. While the game ended in 2016, my planet looked closer to 1947 in terms of technological development. The other civs were just entering the Atomic Era and a few had developed the atomic bomb. To my knowledge, however, no one had actual built or used an atomic weapon though.

So what happened since my last update? I held on to Autocracy and even managed to move my unhappiness into the single digits of happiness for a time. I stole a bunch of technology and raced through the Industrial Age into the Modern Era. My new stream of wealth allowed me to upgrade my military, and even upgrade three frigates into highly promoted, extra range Battleships.

I focused on Happiness with the intention of getting my military upgraded to the point where I could go on a world conquest spree. As it turns out, I just ran out of time. So who won and what was the type of victory?

Before I get into that I wanted to mention the epic thing that happened immediately after I finished the game but before I could post the results here. My internet router died and my computer died. I didn't care about the router but I was heartbroken at the thought of losing all my save games from this game (No Just...One...More...Turn!!!). As fate would have it, BNW didn't kill my computer but something did detonate the heatsink off my five-year-old graphics card resulting in the chip melting. I'm calling it "Alex's Revenge". So the past seven days have been spent upgrading my network and computer. I'll let you know if I can get a performance improvement with BNW with a new solid state drive and more memory. But all of my data is intact.

The game ended with little fanfare. In fact, I had no seeming impact on the final outcome of the game. That was a little disappointing as a nice consolation prize for losing would have been able to play kingmaker. Even worse, I didn't engage in a single war after I ended hostilities with Greece. I killed a non-stop barrage of rebels who popped up all over my empire and even lost Vienna to a culture flip. Yes, those damn students in Vienna stormed the governor's mansion and joined the Aztec Empire. And they took my second National College with them.

Venice
Venice ended up winning a Diplomatic Victory. This was a little surprising as an Autocratic Siam was marching armies across the world with relentless vigor. Portugal was a superpower and Assyria was nothing to sneeze at. But Korea ended up giving the game to Venice.

Korea was a runaway technological superpower. They were the first to enter the Atomic Era, first to Build the Bomb, and the first to face crush Greece into historical oblivion. After ending the war with me, my ex-buddy Alex watched my longtime buddy Korea go on a Greek city conquering rampage. Alex was annihilated. So in short order, Venice built the UN and all of the former Greek City State allies became Venice allies. Game over.

As much as I longed to see the backstabbing Alex be given an eternal dirt nap, the balance of power swung into Venice's favor. Venice had 40 delegates and needed only 38 to win the Diplomatic Victory. I knew this was a possibility but I didn't have anywhere near the gold to buy out Venice's city states. Venice had recently won the International Games wonder event and had about a 239 influence lead over me with each of his city states. I had money but not that type of money.

Conclusions Drawn From the Game
Seasoned players could fill a wiki with the number of mistakes I made. I'll save them the trouble and outline the things I feel I've learned from this humbling experience.

1. Piety + No Religion does not mean automatic loss. I feel like BNW lessened the importance of founding your own religion. If you aren't spending faith creating missionaries to convert the world and you are able to spend faith on buying units, it isn't half bad. I say half bad because faith really loses it's value during the Industrial Age. The faith required to buy a post Industrial unit is monumental. Religion really fades in importance during the later eras.

Going Piety only, in general, seems like it has a high opportunity cost. Liberty, Tradition, and Honor provide growth, culture, and military power. Piety provides faith which can be channeled into growth, culture or military power. That's fine but you have to contemplate the point of buying faith so you can buy growth, culture, or military power when you can get the real thing right away. No need for a faith resource being a less efficient middle man.

2. Revolutionary Waves are bad. I didn't do the math (remember, I hate math) but it seemed like when my empire fell into a Revolutionary Wave, the number of unhappy citizens actually exceeded my total number of citizens. Consequently, no amount of local happiness generation can counter the "extra" mad citizens during a Rev Wave. All of my people could be as locally happy as possible but my empire could still have -20 global unhappiness. This means ideological unhappiness can only really be countered by global happiness promoting mechanisms like luxuries. This can be tough when your economy is broken and all you have at your disposal is hammers (production).

3. City "flip" doesn't reset after getting unhappiness below -20. I went four turns above -20 unhappiness with Vienna. I was able to drive the level into positive territory during 30 turns, but the turn my unhappiness crept up to -20 Vienna flipped to Monty. So city "flip" stays activated. The turns above -20 unhappiness stack and do not need to be consecutive.

4. I double down too much.

5. The AI will take advantage if your local military strength is low. Sending my navy out to smash Venice was theoretically a sound idea. After all, Venice did end up winning the game so I was correct in assessing them as a primary threat. The irony is that if I had kept my navy close to my shores, I probably wouldn't have been backstabbed by Greece and India. Greece would have better been able to hold off Korea and consequently would have kept Venice from running away with the game diplomatically. In fact, it looked like Siam would have eventually crushed Venice militarily.

6. The AI is wildly fun and so utterly strange. Believe it or not, for the last 30 turns of the game Korea was AFRAID of me. Yes, the world-wide leader in technology, inventor of nukes, and destroyer of Carthage and Greece, begged me not to hurt him. Me. I couldn't even keep a bunch of college students from overthrowing my most important conquest city.

7. Ottomans are fun. I had a lot of fun with this civilization. There are a million things I would have done differently now that I'm looking back but it was a fun ride. I especially enjoyed capturing enemy naval units.

8. More civs in a game equals more war. This is simply a hypothesis that needs further testing, but based on comments in the forums and in my game, it seems like the "too passive" AI doesn't really exist when you cram a bunch more civs into the game. It got straight up crazy on my planet with 22 civs on a Large map. I hope we can eventually dial it up to 40+ civs in a game.

9. Losing is still fun. Despite bungling so many things, I still enjoyed the ride. The new mechanics are fun and interesting and I would encourage players to "play on" even after missteps. Despite Venice "winning the game" my empire remained and who knows how things will play out over the turns to come.:)

Thanks to everyone who commented and enjoyed this game with me. If you are interested in any save games, let me know. I am sure many veterans here could pull victory out of my jaws of defeat.

Up Next: I will journal another foray into BNW. Can I do better next time?
 
good job sticking in there to the end.

I started a HUGE map with max civs on epic prince as india. I am experiencing a game where everyone has been friends for most of the game, as I enter the modern era only japan is being aggressive, and so I am forced to bribe others into attacking each other. I was hoping for the AI slug fest that you experienced. I think I need to up my difficulty because this one is going to be an easy cruise to space race victory
 
I liked reading your thread xD It was fun. And I hope you can get your computer problems solved.. my Laptop just died today and I'm contemplating extracting its' Hard drive eh.
 
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