The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game #10 - Polynesia

The Aztecs, Carthage, England, The Inca, Japan, Poland, The Zulus

I read the spoiler on who the other civs were, looked at the not-so-great terrain, and figured I might just go for the "Hail Mary" strategy of taking my settler off this landmass and founding elsewhere. Given that Zulu, Japan, and Aztecs were all there, I wasn't really too excited about trying to survive the early game with 3 very early warmongers. So I marched my settler South, hit the open ocean, and set sail. I left the Maori Warrior on the mainland to steal some workers, meet other civs, and CS, possibly complete some CS requests, and generally just be an observer/nuissance. MW finds 2 huts early, 1 for culture and 1 weapons upgrade. He also steals 1 worker from a CS on t22.

Settler sails South, and finds Sri Pada on t8. Settles on top of Marble on what looks like a wonderful Moai island, IF there is enough food. Settling on t10 isn't anywhere nearly as bad as it could have been, so this was pretty lucky. Sri Pada is outside my initial ring and costs 115 to acquire the tile. I build a scout who steps on the treasure hut on my island, and he lands me 90 gold, so I can buy Sri Pada next turn.

Given the Hail Mary strategy, I'm thinking I'll be settling a lot of cities throughout the oceans and going for Cultural Victory. I'm thinking Liberty path.

Now I know I'm getting a religion. I take One With Nature. Depending on how many other wonders I can settle next to, and if anyone else goes Piety (50/50 given the civs playing), I may go after Sacred Sites. If not, I'm thinking Liberty > Aesthetics or Exploration. I'm 1st to religion and get Pagodas and Tithe. I considered other options than Tithe, but figured it was the most likely to give some benefit, as I was going to have a tough enough time spreading to my own cities, much less any others. I'm not sure what I'll do with other beliefs and will let game circumstances dictate.

BO was Scout > Monument > Maori Warrior (don't need a shrine for awhile) > Settler > Maori Warrior (to escort settler from SP) > Trireme > Granary

I've sent scout East, where he locates a nearby good island for 1st expo and becomes an archer. He then goes further East and finds a couple larger landmasses far away. There are a couple of CS there, a few huts, and an unholy amount of Barbarians who are stalking him everywhere. It's all I can do to keep him alive, much less explore and pop huts. The land is decent, but nothing spectacular yet.

2nd MW goes West, finds a landmass with 2 CS, a middling Natural Wonder (I forgot which one), and pretty good room for 3 cities with good Moai potential. Problem with this landmass is that it is connected by shallow water to the mainland, so I'm going to have to expand and get defenses up quickly. And, yes, there are a bunch more Barbarians all over this place. It's going to take the MW many turns to clear this up, but at least I'll get some CS requests. I'm now considering grabbing Honor opener for the culture boost from all the barbarian kills that will be needed.

I've now settled 3 cities and am content to explore, get necessary techs, build NC, and then, happiness permitting, expand like a colony of unmolested rabbits. I've met 5 civs, and they don't seem to like each other much. I decided to sell embassies, as they won't be able to reach my capital for a long time. I've accepted a couple of DoF's and declined several DoW's. I'll start accepting DoW's if they don't start fighting soon. I've got no resources yet, but some horsies and iron coming soon. I definitely want to stockpile gold, as I want my proposals passed ASAP.

This is shaping up like a very fun, and different for me, game.

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I had to replay about 40 turns as I'm an idiot and forgot to take Honolulu off of Production mode after building settlers. I tried to duplicate my earlier steps, but Monty had settled on the nearby larger island, so I sent that settler off to the other big continent. Everything else worked out about the same. Ended up with a Lib/Tradition SP path, then grabbed a couple in Patronage before Rationalism.

This is pretty slow going. Founding your capital on t9 is a bit of an issue, but I knew that going in. Growth has been awful, as both my early food cargo ships got plundered by 4 barb ships that came out of nowhere. Worst part was, I had sentries up protecting those routes, which I rarely do, and I still got plundered. I finally got out of negative gold around t180, but that's about to change as Honolulu is about to finish its' harbor connecting all cities. The other big issue here is that Honolulu is not in range of any other cites for ITR. I didn't count on that. Instead of 15-20 GPT plus some science, I had to send later cargo ships to the far continent to trade with CS for a measly 7-8 GPT. Happiness has been on again/off again, but I finally have a good merc CS ally, and he provided 2 WLTK's and I took a couple of tenets in Patronage, so I should be able to hold a couple of allies……if I can bank some gold. I've done no trading because basically I've lacked any and all resources.

This game is going to be all about a late game culture push, and it might even work. I've won every CS culture request, and have some really good Moai expos recently settled. My diplo strategy has been to be friendly, but not too friendly, to everyone, avoid all conflicts, and pray nobody comes after me before I get some bribe goodies. I've basically got 2 iron near my territory, and settling on a bigger deposit just wasn't in the cards (I spent about 120 turns barb hunting). If anyone does attack me, I'll last about 3 turns, but if I can stay peaceful until ideologies, I'm going to be fine.

2 ideologies taken so far; Inca > Autocracy, Japan > Order (seems backwards). No clear runaways, as everyone has been fighting off and on, with several cities falling.

One bit of good news is that 3 civs went Piety and none took Sacred Sites as a reformation belief. With the amount of culture I'm pumping out, I'm going to go for that for a late push after ideologies. My 1st 2 cities' religion is pretty safe, and the far continent is now all following the Holy Order of Shark Diving (amazing what 2 missionaries can do without competition). I've got Pagodas up in 5 of 7 cities, and should be able to get 2 more at 300 faith. I'm done building cities, I think.

I'm still only 11% behind in tech, which is pretty surprising. The mainland wars must really be delaying everyone else.

Everything's going OK. I've allowed several civs to settle near me on the 2nd continent, but I got most of the good spots. It was better than losing my capital to a war I cannot win. I'm catching up in tech (sort of).

It's time for ideologies (I'm 6th to choose ideologies, built 3 factories), and things couldn't have worked out much better.



Yeah, I'll be taking Order. Hotels will be up in 10-20 turns and I'll be happily greeting the other nations as they visit the Hotel Kamehmeha to see the lovely view of Moais (I'm going to have a ton of 4+ Moais by the end game.

Now, I've just got to stay out of wars long enough to build up a bit better defense and this will be a sloooooowwww CV. I've finally got SOME resources to bribe with.

PT will be mine shortly (yeah, that's late), and I've got GE's ready for Eiffel and whatever other wonders I need/want.

Shaka is almost out of the game, and I'd be surprised if Poco or Lizzy lasts until the end.

We're down to 6 civs, but Monte and Lizzy won't last the decade. I've almost got all of my hotels built and am almost at airports, kicking out 600 BPT. After that, it's off to find Al Gore and invent some internet action.

I've managed to stay peaceful and haven't even had to throw very many bribes out, although Oda showed up at my door with about 25 ships, only to turn right around to defend his homeland. I'm alternating buildings with units in most cities, but there's no way I'll avoid losing cities if someone decides to get angry.



That's about the most overmatched I've ever felt militarily, but it isn't quite THAT bad. I've got a few battleships, subs, and bombers guarding Honolulu and the 2nd continent has a few GWI's from CS gifts.

Speaking of CS gifts, I'm rolling in them now. I finally took control of World Congress on t291, spending all of my 1000 gold to buy 2 last allies, leaving me broke again.



I wouldn't stay broke for long, as I lost out on Cristo Redemptor on t292 by 3 turns, which pocketed over 1000 gold. It did cost me a GE, which sucks, but I've got faith aplenty and no real place to spend it on (I'm now losing religious battle on 2nd continent, but will send a GP over shortly to right that matter). Also on t292, I finally hit another Golden Age and I've got 3 GA's parked, so I should stay Golden for the rest of the game.

Big decision now is what to propose at WC. All of the Big 3 (Casimir, Dildo, and Oda) have recently finished Manhattan project. I don't think I'll ban nukes, as I'm going to lose if there is a war anyways. I'm actually pleased that they are all on that tech path as I'm only 5% behind, which tells me they've either skipped flight/airports or they are skipping Internet (I THINK that's what that means). I'll probably propose World's Fair even if I can't win. I could use a couple of SP's and a bit of goodwill fits right into my pacifist game plan.

It's slow as molasses, but I can now see possible salvation/victory on the horizon. This has actually been pretty darn fun so far…..hoping nobody spoils the ending.

Around t295 I realized that CV was going to be extremely hard to pull off so I switched paths to science. England had built almost all of the mid-game cultural wonders and was a cultural beast. I couldn't even get a trade route to her, much less open borders. When she went Freedom and Casimir built Great Firewall, I think the decision was justified. Even with a legion of moai's, I don't think I would have gotten enough tourism in time, as there was no way I was winning International Games (I got crushed in WF and barely got my silver medal, even with a Golden Age).

To be honest, it's probably the best job of diplomacy I've ever managed, as I never got around to building much of a defense outside of Honolulu. I simply kept bribing one potential invader off against the others. The warmongers on this map complied very nicely and I never fired a shot in anger the whole game. Late game, I convinced Japan to DoW Poland and the landscape became a nuclear wasteland:



I had a ton of faith and an extra GE already, so, with the free one from Order finisher, I popped 4 GE's to build SS parts. Casimir was only 1 part away, so this came down to the wire, mostly because Honolulu wasn't the production beast a capital should be at this point (it took 4 turns plus a GE to build each part). I had the technology with 10 turns to spare, although I never did pass up Poland for tech lead.

Overall, it was a very fun game and map (someone might be back on my Xmas list). It was a very late win, but I'll take it given the uphill battle and the fact that I had to change directions and made a few mistakes.

I don't mind the Terra map. I don't mind the insane neighbours. It's the lack of good ground that pushes it over the edge for me.

Unlike posters above who had success with their Settler, I played this map three times without success. First time I settled on the coast just south of the starting location, made a scout and sent him out but he didn't find anything for like 30 turns. Meanwhile the lack of good dirt made me unable to grow or make hammers for defence.

Second time I sent the Settler off straight away and despite the sight advantage he landed on an island which we can safely say was named 'Barb Island'. No sooner did he land than he was trampled by a horse and captured.

Third time I sent him in a different direction and he was trampled, this time by a Galley.

Not fun for me, sorry.

Met Monte's settler early and apparently managed to scare it away. DoWed him on T8 for a free worker but didn't even try another as it wouldn't have survived even the next turn. Teched for mining and did some deforesting near Honolulu to equalize the movement with Jaguars. Shaka & Casimir checked my borders early so I paid Shaka to attack Monte on T22. Due to faith ruin got a pantheon on T38 where I stopped before the challenge. Without any obvious choices I took One with Nature and planned to settle the 2nd continent beside NWs but that's yet to happen on T75.
Since I wasn't coastal the plan was to settle quickly another city and send a settler trailing the one of the scouts to the other continent. This failed as it took some time to get the first settler out and Casimir with largest army and Honor start darkened my horizon so I denounced and he attacked next turn. I wasn't in any great danger of losing Honolulu but I didn't have many workable tiles either so growth was halted and production slowed. Luckily Shaka kept the Aztec main pack busy.
Befriended with Japan, Monte is friendly after the war as is Shaka. Dido & Pachacuti offered DoF but I refused as both are warring with Shaka who isn't keen on DoW Casimir which I'd prefer as he still has the largest army. Lizzy tried to settle near my capital but due to mine & Polish troops she didn't fit in.

The 2nd continent looks better than average but I don't have a detailed plan for settlements yet. The major difference in this game is that as I wasn't thinking of DCL at start I opened Tradition for giggles so this will something different to my clean sheet with Liberty & domination so far.
As long as the others are willing to war just keeping the capital intact should be enough to win but I'm trying to think of something on top of that. Early or even XBow conquering is probably already out of the question. At this point it seems that I'll have a hard time growing the capital and since the 3rd city will be planted after the NC and not on T60 or before it'll take some time to get rolling.

It's been ages since AI apart from Shaka has properly attacked before T50 so a fresh start in that respect -otherwise everything is like a slow-mo movie but that was expected.