Deities in Calamity (DIE)

Low commerce, slow start. Settled in place.

Popped a scout and some gold

Met GK very early indicating he is very close. Scouted his land a bit, DOW and killed 2 of his scouts. promoted warrior to W2 and went choking.

Tech order: AH-Mining-BW(Dogs)-Myth-wheel-Pottery(for much needed cottages)-Hunting-ARchery-writing

Build order: worker/warrior/warrior/(stole 2 workers)/settler

3120AD: Choking GK. GK's capital is surrounded by woods, captured 2 of his workers.




2240BC: Woodsman2 warrior terrorizing GK's neighborhood, disrupting worker actions and diverting his military resources. I settled Poverty point to get horse/copper/floods




1920BC: Making Sure GK is not hooking up that horse. And no metal to be found.




1480BC: GK has metal units! NP, we have dogs and chariots.


1400BC: Razed GK desert town.

Monty is very aggrssrive setting toward me, I rushed to some hill sites to the South, but carefully placed cities not to be too close to his cities.

And Monty DOWs Shaka @525BC. I had CG3+G1+D1 ARchers guarding the hill cities.

6 City empire. had lots more cottages than usually due to lack of workable gold/gem. Mound City being GP farm working 2 fish and cottages. 1 GG setteled in capital, 2nd GG is 4 pts away. IF settle 2 GG in capital, it can pump out CG3+G1+D1 Archer. Sounds scrary...

Not sure about Aesth, non of these 3 war fools have Alpha, maybe Monty is close. Accepted Monty's demand to switch to his State Religion, very nice +3 mod.

Plan is to befriend Monty since he is close and the strongest. Poor GK had been choked hard and will prob be a non-factor except furnishing GG points. He does have Keshiks now.

Hope i can trade for IW soon as i have 2 gems. Can settle 1 more city taking Rice/Spice

War is pure defensive against GK now since he only has crap cities, so i dont need to maint a large army and can defend very efficiently being SB. Need to work on the econ. Do have some great potential with these cities.

As I said before I don't like the start not too much but see no reason not to settle in place. Hope for some strat resource 2E of Cahokia, preferably iron.

City builds Warrior > Worker > dogs. Initial warrior follows the northern coast and soon finds GK.

Techpath: Mining > BW > AH > Wheel > Pottery > Myst.

Popped 3 huts for 90g and 4 barbs.

2nd warrior scouts southwards and runs into monty. Nobody told me this is a game vs warmongers

Initial warrior finds GK lands, very close. Also there's a free worker I gladly take. Switch all EPs off GK and onto monty.

GK doesn't seem to have copper in his capital and only gets horsies later so I decide to try to capture some cities. Spam dogs non-stop, but whip rax once I get to size 5 the first time.

1880BC A lonely dog running around finds out that GK's 2nd city is only guarded by an unpromoted archer. Thanks for the cash, genghis



2nd time cahokia grows to 5 I whip a settler to grab copper. Since I don't have myst yet I settle next to copper. Horses can be grabbed by a later filler city grabbing me whales too.

I have mined all (forested) mines and got quite some chops for a nice army of dogs (and the maintenance cost). After pottery I start cottaging up Cahokia.

1680BC I've been moving all dogs towards turfan, GK's horse city, he has 5-10 archers in there, plan works Move 5 dogs around to Karakorum, guarded by 2 archers, and capture it. Look at that seafood It even has a lighthouse





1600BC, myst about to come in. Next tech surely is Writing to get the important GPs. Not sure what after that, standard (for me) is aest but I don't have marble and am philo so NE and GL aren't that important (and I won't be building many units after I get HE up anyway). I don't think I get many trading opportunities with monty and whoever is on my conti as well (I don't expect mansa ). IW I surely need for jungle.

Monty is scary, he has 6 cities up to now. Need OB with him so I get hindu and can convert. Priority now is to block him off. But there's a nice GPFarm spot just south of Cahokia with 2 fish... not sure whether to settle that first (maintenance... ).

Not sure how to deal with GK either. I think he has too many archers to be taken easily. I don't get anything for peace (at least until alphabet)... and I don't expect a major retaliation strike from him... I'll probably just choke him with my dogs until I get something for peace and have most of the city sites settled.

Oh and I'm glad I didn't join the discussion regarding AI leaders... always nice to be surprised The thread title of course suggests an interesting game


edit: Forgot to mention, I intercepted a settling party in the desert... another free worker yay

Tech: Myst > writing > IW > sailing > hunting > archery

I decided to choke Turfan to avoid future GK cities, deny him horses and get some pillaging money. However, that was not to be:



Yeah, I razed his last city. That stupid AI keeps moving its archers around everywhere in the open so I might as well punish him for that. He only had 2 archers in that city, 3 workers, a settler and a galley. Bye-bye Temujin, see you in the next deity game, hopefully not in my backyard again
Downside: I sudently had to pay 4 more gpt upkeep for those workers not that I'm complaining...

Once I got writing I OBd Monty... it only took him about 3 turns to spread hinduism to my capital and I gladly converted:



He continued swarming my cities with hindu missionaries. Monty does have his uses afterall

650BC I meet Shaka, founder of Buddhism . I noticed the oracle being built late (1 turn before the mids ) and I wondered why. That's probably the reason. Take that, techclub
I guess that's that warmonger respect. They both have -3 but are only cautious. I quickly become shaka's worst enemy who soon after that entered WHEOOH Thus teching archery btw.

Same turn I get my first GS in karakorum. Academy in Cahokia:



It really hurt delaying 100% science for that academy and you can see I turned research up for a few turns after finishing the library (forgot not to ).


I settled: Future HE city > GemsCopperClamsBanana > CowBananaIron. I'm glad I have so many workers now, new cities are set up quickly.


Land Overview (with dotmap):



Misc:

• Lost the totem pole in Karakorum to a RE
• Popped iron in capital
• Had to settle the last city a bit earlier than I wanted due to monty settling party about to settle there. I now have one of the shortest borders with him, I hope he doesn't squeeze in more cities so there will be no tension.
• Karakorum whipped a galley to explore eastwards.
• Brown dot will be either 1S or 1W as iron popped there. Not that I plan to settle that city anytime soon
• Both gems online, that and TRs with Sailing got me to break even around 30%
• Other conti has confucianism, and a GE who rushed Chicken Pizza
• Monty built ToA and oracle. He's showing a new side of his personality, no?
• Expect Shaka stack soon. Cahokia (settled MI) is cranking out military units to give that stack a proper welcome. Having a few units around is handy anyway
• Switched all EPs to monty once I DOWd GK. Hope to steal a tech or three sometime
• Speaking of GK, he shows once more that warmongers are rubbish at defending (though that migh have something to do with him being AI... )
• I'd like some input regarding techpath. I'd like the GL or another wonder in Cahokia as it has lots of spare forests. Also I want to get up NE + HE ASAP, sadly there's no marble Does anyone have suggestions to another techpath? I doubt I'll get alpha by trade in a reasonable amount of time (or any tech), I see monty research so I have a picture of AI tech status... so it's not really necessary. A option to consider is maths > calendar for resources. Especially poverty point (cottage heaven) could use some .
• I'll get another GS in 6. I see two options, a) bulb philo to delay techclub in teching lib or b) academy in poverty point. I'm leaning towards a), to give PP some time to mature its cottages. OTOH, denying the other conti another religion would lead to even more AI-AI love (*shudder* ), not what I'm intending. Opinions?

Oh, did that get a bit long? I'll try to keep it shorter in future, but the game is going great, I'm excited, what can I do?


edit: An interesting idea is to settle Stone Site too, tech masonry and use the wall-whip-chop-overflow semi-exploit...

Moved Warrior to Silk and found a river + 2 FP + 2 riverside hill tiles, so moved settler toward the river and settled to grab Cow/Silk/Spice.


Tech:
Mine->BW->Wheel->Hunting->AH->Pottery->Mys->Writing->Archery->Aes

Capital:
Worker->War->Dog->Barrack->3/4Dog->Settler...

DOWed GK with the bonus of his free worker at 20ish turn. With WoodmanII Dogs, the free workers were more than enough and I had to delete them in later stage. The payment for units is ~10g all the time, which is really a heavy burden for our pity empire. I don't dare to settle more cities until Monty approached the border of capital. GK could not settle any city in the game and he is now down to one city. Monty is in WHEOOHN mode for a few turns before he is pleased to me, I think he should go for Shaka now since I don't even have border contact with him at that time. So the game in this stage is at least safe now and I will have room to settle more than 10 cities.

400BC Empire with 4 cities


Good work! Gliese, this game is easier than I thought, You could give GK a copper and make the game much more tougher.

Nice play. I thought it might be too difficult if all the warmongers had good land and surrounded the player so I went with this map. The question is how good the peacemongers will play, as noted they're not as good as the aggressive techers (HC, Hannibal Willem etc).
If this turns out to be too easy I can always start another and just gradually increase the difficulty.

@Mystyfly
It is amazing to capture GK's capital so early with Dogs (Dogs suck in taking cities, you need 3 dogs for an archer for a sure win), how many Dogs did you bring in? In general, even ~15 Dogs won't do the work. In my game, GK can even bring a stack of 6 archers to my land when I have 4 Dogs in his land. Laugh at me, I dare not to attack even facing 2 archers in the cities with 4 Dogs.

Click to expand...

You are completely right. In theory, you're right . Some factors that helped me:

• I believe I mentionned that, I had a stack of dogs near turfan first and GK moved most of his archers over there. Then there were archers wandering around, for example the settler-escort. This lead to GK having only 2 archers in his capital.
• These wandering archers gave my dogs lots of xp, most of those that attacked Karakorum were CR3 at that point
• You ask for numbers, I think I brought 6 (sic) dogs to Karakorum to take down the 2 archers. Please note that my CR3 dogs had around 60% odds of victory against archers in 20% culture cities (unlike Karakorum, 40% culture).
• If the gambit with "sieging" Tabriz hadn't worked and he kept his archers split up I would have had no other choice than to deny him horses and wait for a better day

The way it now worked out for me helped me a ton, getting rid of GK so easily and early. Monty should be manageable, I'm very happy with the border we're having. Once I get ABC I'll do my best to bribe him vs shaka to keep them busy for centuries. I don't think I'll have much trouble holding up shaka's stack when it comes. Protective ftw!

Regarding winning plan; I plan to beeline draftles as the land is simply excellent for drafting and have a go at monty and shaka if I can. Hope to win domination or if available backdoor diplo.

Got IW first, abandoned Aesth line since I needed so many other econ techs. Had no trade opportunity. Went COL line, then Alpha, bulbed Philo and was able to get some trades, including from GK! prob wise to leave GK weak but tradeable partner.

50BC: Gifted Iron to Shaka so he can fight Monty better.

100AD: Monty ends war with Shaka and DOWs me at Pleased...!

I rushed tons of Archers to the hill cities. Settling the hill city proves to be a good move against nuts like Monty. I later found out that hill has Iron well...

He brought some real stacks with lots siege.




450AD: Showdown, Aztech hordes Vs. Native American super archers lol...

With enough siege, Monty killed a good number of my archers, but he left many more dead bodies at Chaco Canyon... I had a medic3 chariots in the city to heal, And i settled 2 GGs in capital to produce 10xp Archers every turn.

I lost Mesa Verde to Monty since it is on flat land and simply not defendable. But after Monty lost his entire invasion force, I was able to take it back. (very rare situiation in a defensive war).

Leaving GK Alive proves to be useful (could not kill him earlier anyway), but now every trade partner counts here since i was involved in very long wars with huge armies and very low research. I even got currency from GK later, then philo+cur for Feudal from Shaka.




820AD:

Even barb decided to give a run at my capital on a landing mission lol

Monty came with another wave of Mace/treb/HA, simply cant defend against that, so offered the gem city to him for peace.




960AD: Met Darius, got some resource trades.

1070AD: captured a barb city to the Eastern landmass.

Popped a GSpy in my gpfarm since a spy was automatically assigned, i decided to infiltrate Monty in my lost city. Stole Guilds for a good price.




1190AD: Have 8 cities, will capture another barb city soon. Scores. Darius is small but most advanced, Monty just Vassaled Shaka, not good. Will bulb education, and steal toward Chemistry. Tech rate still very slow, had to maint that large defensive force. HAve HE in capital and can produce 10xp long bow xbows, but Monty is just HUGE, not sure if this is winnable from here, will see soon enough.

I am runnign Caste, after chemistry, my cities will have very high hammer counts, so if Monty allows me to get steel, I might have a slight chance in some mil actions.

Tech:
Alpha->Currency->Math->Aes->Drama->Music->Med->Bulb Phi->Priest

Although I had 13 Dogs/Chariots at the moment and could easily add a few more in short time, I don't think these 4 strength units are able to take GK's capital with 6 guarding archers. So I made peace with GK after Alpha was in and take three techs. Next turn I traded IW from Monty with HBR.


As expected, Monty DOW Shaka and I followed in the next turn. Shaka is as good as nothing for trade in this game with religious difference.


I redeclared after peace treaty, GK was smart enough to add a sword and Axe in his capital, however his archers went to the iron city and with his another settler. Still I lost heavily in taking his capital. In 150AD, despite of one settled GG in the city, I razed it, so gone of GK.


I won the Music race and also was the 1st to phi. So the AIs in other continent are not that advanced. Monty will be friendly with me for some fair trade.

375AD Empire of 7 cities. Plus the barb city and up right and left islands. I'll have more than enough cities to a win.


375AD Tech



The end.

It seems going Mining-BW->chop Dogs is the better rush since you can get the first 2 dogs to GK's land really early and just completely stop his expansion.

Since dogs are resource less, all you need is some trees in capital. I ll keep this in mind. only problem will be if enemy has horse in BFC.