Role Play Challenge, TNG:The Dalai Lama, A One City Challenge

Segments:

Segment 1: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8827350&postcount=24
Segment 2: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8830972&postcount=58
Segment 3: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8835126&postcount=88
Segment 4: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8838150&postcount=113
Segment 5: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8843377&postcount=159
Segment 6: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8846489&postcount=177






Welcome to my next Role Play Challenge, The Next Generation. Here we play as famous leaders in history (real or fictional) while self-imposing rules to make the game more challenging and fun. The CIV 52 leaders have all been played out already and their stories can be found in the RPC Classics thread.

Here we play as the Dalai Lama, Holy Buddhist leader of the Tibetan people. The Dalai Lama is a simple man of peace, requiring only one city, and only enough military to defend the Tibetan peoples. But how can such a peaceful leader win at this game, we shall have to see!

Map Settings

We are playing a slightly modified Earth-18 Map, with the following changes

An extra Mountain is added in the Tibetan passes limiting Tibet's contact to ONE Forrested Hill.

All hills in Tibet has been changed to grassland, based on the blessings of teh Dalai Lama.

Some resources were added to Lhasa's Big Fat Cross: Stone, Wheat, Cows.

The Dalai Lama replaces the German empire and he is playing using Sitting Bulls traits and the Native American's UU/UB.

Starting techs have been altered: Tibet starts with Agriculture and Mysticism (fishing is pointless). All Civilizations that normally start with Mysticism has had that replaced with a more useful starting tech, thus only Tibet starts with Mysticism.

Isabella and Hyuna Capac's starts have been moved onto the coast.

NOTE: Tibet does not have the following: copper/iron/oil/coal/uranium/aluminum. If we pop any I will address that as it comes (either WB it out or simply NOT road it).

RULES!

1) The Dalai Lama is a holy man and certainly should benefit from Spiritual, therefore I will worldbuild the Christo Redentor into Lhasa after we settle the capital. Sure we get free Great engineer points and extra culture alos, sue me!

2) The Dalai Lama is a pacifist and cannot declare war, nor cancel trades (and must defy the AP or UN if need be).

3) Tibetans may defend themselves but only from positions outside of the captial's BFC. Also the capital may ONLY contain ONE honorary warrior guard!

4) The Dalai Lama MUST found Buddhism.

Otherwise, we can play as we see fit!

Our leader



The New and Improved Tibet



The Dalai Lama starts with agriculture and Mysticism. After Meditation I think AH is next, then perhaps masonry and the wheel.

OK, how long do we think the Holy Man from Tibet lasts???

No reason you can't win, although it hurts not having forests for late NP + bio abuse (maybe we can use the jungle ).

Cow-towing off of china seems like fun. With CR from the start giving into demands isn't painful.

A lot of peaks in the fat cross and land outside the mountain range makes things interesting.

The whole protective fort on a forest hill should allow any defense as needed, but giving into resource/tech demands should mitigate any real pressure as long as we get QSH to friendly (easy ---> good favorite civic for us).

We're pretty food poor. Windmills are going to be encouraged here heavily.

think you can culture flip Delhi?

Why not go on to get Hindu as well? that would give you alot more diplomatic options incase budism does not take off as you hope.

What difficulty are you playing this at?

Lots of Tibetans carry around huge knives/swords. The monks tend to be pretty buff people as well. I think Duns and Guerilla 1 Swords would have been more accurate.
Also there are important passes to the east (Szichzuan) Southwest (India, very important), northwest (Xinjiang/Kazakhstan), and the Northeast (Amdo/Qinhai).

madscientist said:

1) The Dalai Lama is a holy man and certainly should benefit from Spiritual, therefore I will worldbuild the Christo Redentor into Lhasa after we settle the capital. Sure we get free Great engineer points and extra culture alos, sue me!

Click to expand...

First time post on a MadScientist RPC, but I couldn't resist on this one. I'm guessing this rule is a left-over form Lord Satan right.

Brian Shanahan said:

First time post on a MadScientist RPC, but I couldn't resist on this one. I'm guessing this rule is a left-over form Lord Satan right.

Click to expand...

Welcome, and yep. Gotta clean up my soul a bit here!

@Vocawoo. Knives and swords are fine except the Tibetans have no metals although I suppose we could trade for it, surely Incense is worth iron!

@CreeDakota. Difficulty is Emperor, Epic Speed.

@TMIT. The six Peaks at what I am most concerned about!

Greened-up Tibet looks like a bouncy castle!

Or a huge space ship launch pad (if you make it that far) ... best of luck!

Should be interesting. Hopefully India finds the light in hinduism. Having some nearby religious competition is needed for the Dalai Lama to proove that his faith is the one true faith.

I predict that you will do a lot of kowtowing to the chinese and possibly the Indians. Your basically stuck between a surefire powerhouse and a civ that if it expands from its subcontinent can get fairly significant. And either way your surrounded by those two so your proboably going to want to keep them happy.

Perhaps it would be better if Asoka didn't get hinduism then

I don't understand the choice of Sitting Bull as a template for the Dalai Lama, especially in light of worldbuildering in Cristo Redentor (litigation pending Mr. Free GEP).

Why not Saladin or Ghandi of somewhere (I'm thinking of Celtia, to convey the Tibetian's mastery of the mountainous terrain)?

Care to share why you didn't go SPI? The boost to temple building seems particularly well suited here, given the thousands of monasteries built in Tibet prior to the 1940s.

One nitpick @ the map: you forgot to re-apply the fog of war after moving the units.

Nares said:

I don't understand the choice of Sitting Bull as a template for the Dalai Lama, especially in light of worldbuildering in Cristo Redentor (litigation pending Mr. Free GEP).

Why not Saladin or Ghandi of somewhere (I'm thinking of Celtia, to convey the Tibetian's mastery of the mountainous terrain)?

Care to share why you didn't go SPI? The boost to temple building seems particularly well suited here, given the thousands of monasteries built in Tibet prior to the 1940s.

One nitpick @ the map: you forgot to re-apply the fog of war after moving the units.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that fog of wart thing I had alot of trouble with it. I decided the hell with it (sorry, still got satan on my mind) and figured it's not going to help much..

Regarding starting leader, several points as I am sure others are thinking the same thing

1) Spi/Phil was done in the Gupta game so I wanted different set of traits for another Pacifist. Spi/Pro was done recently for the Prophet M. While mixing and matching are fine, I still prefer NOT to get the same trait combos that many times

2) The other Spitiual combos were Hatty (CRE sucks OCC), Justinian (IMP sucks OCC with no warring). Monty (Hello, we are the dalai Lama), Mansa (a waste in a OCC). Brennus (CHA) I am saving for a future game. Ramesses (IND) and Issy (EXP) were the SPI considerations. With the expected low population due to 6 mountains, EXP is probably not that great in this OCC.

3) PHI is a powerful OCC trait (hey OCC is hard enough) and Protective seams very important here as I do expect some sort of warring and with no metals or horses.... The Totem could be a godsend (or Buddha send).

4) Yet the Dalai deserves Spi. Easy, I worldbuild the Christo redentor. The early GE makes up for the atrocious Tibetan start, even with the new landscaper. Hell Picard's Botany Bay looks like a paradise.

5) Temples are irrelevant here as we shall have alot of production. Also unless the Dalai Lama founds all religions (possible!) I don't see other religion spreading to Lhasa.

6) Which brings me to the last point, resourcelss Axemen once I get BW. Delays hunting/archery for a while to wonderspam.

So I made the game very difficult with location and OCC, and compensated a bit with the free Great Wonder.

Thank you for the explanation. My curiosity is sated.

The easiest victory in this game would be diplomatic. It shouldnt be that difficult for survival, because you are shielded by China and India. Probably need to give into demands from Persia.

Infantry#14 said:

The easiest victory in this game would be diplomatic. It shouldnt be that difficult for survival, because you are shielded by China and India. Probably need to give into demands from Persia.

Click to expand...

VC's that are out:

Time
Conquest
Domination (both military VC's would break a rule)
Culture (Impossible in OCC w/o Perm Alliances)

VCs that are pretty doable:

AP
UN
Space

With 17 other civs, seems like diplo would be awfully tough, but my diplo skills aren't anywhere near others, so I guess it's viable. Seems like AP would require a ton of effort to get the religion spread everywhere. I guess I would go space, but even that's a challenge if someone like Cathy or Qin really gets going.

AP wouldn't be too bad ---> pick someone like Qin to get to friendly and spam the religion to him (but keep him in another...shouldn't be hard with CR). Spread everywhere else and watch Qin vote you winner.

I shadowed it!

To 1961 AD ---> Finish

TheMeInTeam said:

AP wouldn't be too bad ---> pick someone like Qin to get to friendly and spam the religion to him (but keep him in another...shouldn't be hard with CR). Spread everywhere else and watch Qin vote you winner.

I shadowed it!

To 1961 AD ---> Finish

Spoiler :

Founded buddhism of course. It would be only in the very late ADs that I managed to shrine it. Spread buddhism around and teched out a very slow OCC space. The screen shots tell more than I can via typing probably.










I always seem to tech poorly. But, there are ways to win anyway, like AI denial. I of course went henge/mids, but also got hanging gardens (very helpful), parthenon, great library, and the sistine chapel.

Sistine is very nice ---> getting it blocks the AI from going culture easily. I got late civil service (300 or 400 AD), won lib for nationalism around 1000 AD (built taj), then went for astro (observatory), bio/environmentalism, electricity, AL, plastics, computers.

I build the internet a little after 1850 AD. Doing so sealed the game, I got rocketry, satellites, composites, fission (AI threw a lot of nukes at each other this time) from internet (along with a LOT of backfill tech). This allowed my pathetic tech rate to wheeze across the finish line.

So, how did I get mining inc, standard ethanol, the internet, iron for iron works, copper for internet, and aluminum for space parts?!

I bought them. ALL of them . That gold you see from the shrine was going somewhere!!!

Anyway although I sucked for speed I did manage to hid behind Qin and I did manage to complete a victory long before the AI (as of my landing the AIs all needed multiple techs to launch, and the best culture whore was not even 1/4 the way there).

The lack of resources is definitely mitigated by the fact that the RPC angle and guaranteed early holy city that gets a strong shrine allows us to simply buy whatever resources we need and then some. I had mining inc (which I got mostly to deny it from the AI) to ~6 and ethanol was like 8 beakers (and oil not that I used it).

As you can see in the final screen shot, I was also buying uranium off Qin. True to RPC rules, the capitol kept 1 warrior only the entire game, the nukes were put in forts .

I was not in 1 war the whole game.

Click to expand...

Nuts, I fantasy bet Diplomatic.

TheMeInTeam said:

VC's that are out:

Time
Conquest
Domination (both military VC's would break a rule)
Culture (Impossible in OCC w/o Perm Alliances)

VCs that are pretty doable:

AP
UN
Space

Click to expand...

AP victory is difficult (if not impossible) b/c america is another landmass and you cant build ships. Also, how can you contact aztec, US and inca w/o the UN?

Shouldn't the Capital be renamed Shangri-la?? I mean it is a one city challenge

And deny Llasa its place as home of the Dalai Llama and glorious capital of the Empire of Tibet. I think not!

---

Is it possible to worldbuild or otherwise alter the traits so you can have spiritual and another trait you want. After all worldbuildering in the Christo gives you a big cultural advantage over your neighbors, and it gives you somewhat of a different experience then true spiritual.

If your set on the old christo though i suppose you could limit the wonders you build to spiritual (religious) ones. Considering the asceticness and piousness of the tibetans, and to offset the early cultural advantage Christo gives you. This still allows the sistine, sankore and a host of other wonders though so its not too bad.

IPEX-731BA5DD06 said:

Shouldn't the Capital be renamed Shangri-la?? I mean it is a one city challenge

Spoiler :

Mean's Paradise or Utopia

Click to expand...

I don't think they've ever exclusively specified shangri-la as a place; I've heard like 3 different places called Shangri-la. The Dalai Lamas did rule from the Potala Palace in Lhasa, though.



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