Preamble:
I’ve been playing a lot of Civilization 5 since release and I’m pretty confident on deity now. I haven’t seen any games posted, although there was some great discussion and I learned a lot reading posts by Martin Alvito et al. My intent in posting this is to spark some discussion on correct rex methods and plays and good timeframes for hitting tech x, or needing military, et cetera. If you have any feedback on mechanics or mistakes etc, please post it. (In terms of immediate mistakes I think I had too few workers, but in terms of exact math on stuff like worker vs paper maker, the worker does not really win out for like 36 turns assuming it just builds TP)
I find larger maps on deity get pretty frustrating - they’re still very winnable, but you have to wade through entire blankets of enemy troops. Small/tiny pangaea or oval maps are much more enjoyable for me, so. Note that I think small/tiny maps are a little easier too - they give you a better start because you do not have to worry about setting up as many production heavy cities in that the game will not go on for as many turns and you will not get the full benefit from the last x cities (also, you get a little better production in the midgame at the expense of research/GS). China are obviously just very solid and have all the tools you need to beat any map on any setting.
In this game I’ll be aiming for early expansion into a domination victory. My plan is to use warriors-swordsmen and archers for early defense while building up techs towards machinery for Cho-Ko-Nu (CKN), starting a war with CKN and longswords, and then hitting rifling asap after this (using GS to bulb metallurgy and rifling). Policy wise I plan to hit double xp in honor (mainly for range3 indirectfire CKN, but also double xp + CKN blitz helps to fuel a lategame economy with many great general golden ages). I do not plan to abuse any trade-dow-trade cascade stuff (because I feel like it will get fixed), but everything else is fair game.
Misc note: I used to go liberty for the +50% settler build, but apparently it is nothing like 50% really. So I don't do that now!
So, on to the game:
Our starting position -
Turns 1-5: Starting position looks good, so I found on the spot. I start building a scout, and start researching mining (to clear trees and because I’m aiming for masonry for the +happy and working that sweet marble square). I send my warrior out scouting, and he discovers Belgrade and a barbarian camp.
Turns 6-10: My scout finishes and I start a warrior. I discover two ruins, one giving +50g and one giving +1 population in Beijing. Mining finishes and I move on to masonry.
Turns 11-15: I discover another ruin (+30 culture) and immediately adopt honor. I start moving my warrior back towards Beijing to deal with any barbarians. My scout keeps scouting and discovers Oslo (friendly maritime, yay!).
Turns 16-20: My worker finishes and I start building a settler. I plan to found just to the north of me, in a location with gems and fish. I keep scouting and meet Catherine and Suleiman. Masonry finishes and I start hitting trapping to work those deer and build TP. Catherine offers OB and Suleiman offers a PoC. I accept both.
Turns 21-25: My scout discovers Suleman’s capital quite close to me, and meets Brussels. My worker improves the wheat near Bejing then moves on to the marble. Catherine offers a PoC, which I accept.
Turns 26-30: TGL built in a faraway land. Settler finishes in Bejing - I take my warrior and escort it north. I start another settler immediately. My scout discovers Catherine’s capital. I meet Elizabeth (from the west). A warrior turns up at my capital while I’m escorting the settler and I have to flee with my worker. I’m starting to think the land to my east is all unclaimed, which is great.
Turns 31-35: While taking this SS I realize I will be screwed on happiness unless I get BW and start working those gems, so I change my research to BW. Oh well. Elizabeth asks for a PoS vs Catherine, and I accept. On T33 Catherine completes Stonehenge and Suleiman completes the great lighthouse.
Turns 36-40: Finish second settler and start a scout. I would start a worker but I plan to steal one from Belgrade with the scout. Catherine DoWs Brussels. I finish BW, start chopping the jungle on gems, and hit trapping again. Catherine asks for a PoS vs Suleiman, and I accept. (How exactly do PoS work? I assume it makes her more likely to declare war but also likely to ask me to declare war, and if I say no she’s upset?).
Turns 41-45: Beijing finishes the scout and I start a warrior. Finish trapping and start pottery. Elizabeth asks for a PoC, and I accept. My scout steals a worker from Belgrade. Suleiman DoWs Brussels. I found Guangzhou near some gold. Suleiman gets upset with me settling near him and I tell him I’ll refrain from doing so in the future (which is true - I have all the cities I want up there right now). I finish researching… whatever I was researching and start sailing (so I can hit whales for happiness).
At this point I realize I’ve screwed up the screenshots I was taking somehow. Oops. I will not screw this up in the future.
Turns 46-50: Colossus, Hanging Gardens and Pyramids built on turn 47. I start another settler in Beijing. Elizabeth and Catherine offer OB, I accept. My worker finishes the mine on the gems a turn before my population expands, taking me from 0-4 happiness. I move him to the gold at Guangzhou to boost this further. Oslo wants a barbarian encampment destroyed, so I send my new warrior towards it. My second scout is killing barbarians at the place I’m planning to found my fourth city (58% bonus with honor). Sailing finishes and I start writing.
Turns 51-55: Catherine gets Oracle at t53. Writing finishes. I get enough culture for the free-GG policy but pass for now because I don’t want to pay the maintinence costs.
Turns 56-60: I start researching Archery. My fourth settler finishes and I head towards the dye to my east to get a fourth city up. Beijing starts work boats so I can hit a whale resource there. On turn 60 I bribe Oslo for 500g, and now need to wait a few turns to hit the whales south of Beijing.
Turns 60-65: Suleiman asks me to DoW on Catherine and I refuse. I destroy the encampment for Oslo for a lot of extra influence. I have a bunch of extra happy right now so I sell whales to Suleiman for 300g (I could have probably done this earlier and bribed Oslo earlier). All my cities are building Paper-Makers, I keep scouting, and start researching iron working.
Turns 66-70: A barbarian Trireme turns up at Shanghai and starts costing me +3/turn. Frustrating. I still have not found Elizabeth. Cities are still building paper-makers. I discover Venice, another maritime state, but it is hostile. A scout dies to two barbarians - I’d left it on fortify until healed and stopped paying attention.
Turns 71-75: I start a fifth settler, though I still only have two workers. I feel like this is probably optimal given that I have so much jungle, and that paper-makers are > workers for 30 turns or so. Catherine asks me to DoW on Suleiman and I refuse. IW finishes and I hit engineering. I ally Venice, who are hostile, but still maritime which is awesome.
Turns 76-80: More of the same - not much scouting, but clearing out barbarians near me, starting a couple of workers to upgrade tiles and pick up iron so I can upgrade my warriors to swordsmen.
Turns 81-85: I found my fifth city. The maritime states are kicking in (I had to give Venice another 250g) and my income and production are quite high, but my military is worryingly terrible. Other than this I have paper makers in my first four cities, three workers with a fourth coming out soon, two allied maritime states, enough lux resources to not need to build Colosseums yet (this is very awesome - Colosseums are like -3.75gpt 187.5 hammers for 5 happiness (average’d), vs allying a maritime state for +2 food in all cities -7~gpt 500g up front before patronage).
Turns 86-90: Catherine DoW’s Suleiman. I’m rushing some military and letting cities grow. Workers are improving resources where possible and other tiles where not. I also pop a great general from fighting barbarians. On turn 90 I hit engineering.
Turns 91-100: Scrambling more military here. I pop one great scientist that I save, and keep two cities running sci specialists so I’ll have two more within 50t. One will go when I bulb metallurgy and rifling, and another will go on bulbing dynamite later. Suleiman makes peace with Catherine. I have no idea where Elizabeth is (still), but she just entered the renaissance era. I upgrade my warriors to swordsmen, position my GG nicely, take the honor policy for a free GG and burn him on a golden age. I’m heading toward steel researchwise, and everything is looking rather good.
Turns 101-105: I set up for war near Suleiman, start setting up trade routes, cities keep growing, squares keep getting improved.
Turns 106-110: Ready for war vs Suleiman.
I attack -
Suleiman retaliates… by stealing a worker.
I basically kill all his stuff here with my CKN fuelled retaliation, and do not lose a unit. I am building a coliseum for the first time here because as I start taking cities I’m going to need a little extra happiness.
At this point everything is looking rather good. I’m planning to upgrade my swordsmen to longswordsmen and head towards Suleiman with everything there, keep pumping some CKN that will be upgraded to riflemen in future, connect everything with roads to boost my income up… find Elizabeth, and roll through Suleiman then Catherine.
Turns 111-115: I lose a swordsman to three spearmen after not noticing a road (oops). Catherine declares war on Oslo and I start building some scouts to block her units there.
Turns 116-120: Catherine has a loot of units at Oslo, and I don’t know if my scouts will be in time. My CKN are still murdering everything of Suleiman’s coming towards the choke point I have at Bursa. I want to emphasize that this is the ‘right’ way to play a war on deity - let the enemy come to you, don’t push too hard, kill all his stuff, take almost no losses, get a bunch of XP. I get another great general and golden age it here too. I finally take Bursa with a longswordsman, raze it, and move my military up a little. My income is high because of GG fuelled golden ages, but my military expenses are getting pretty bad. Trade networks + cities growing is helping out, and I just started building a couple of coliseum to deal with growing cities + annexing Suleiman’s capital when I do. I finally discover England! As I’m finally getting scouts to Oslo and grimacing at my military upkeep, Catherine makes peace with it, then declares she’s protecting it. Jerk.
Turns 121-125: At this point in the game I’m building coliseum, about to get gunpowder and the two GS needed for rifling (so I keep up CKN production to get blitz riflemen). My production is really high, gold is nice, golden age uptime is probably 50%+, and I’m closing in on Suleiman’s capital. I lose one more CKN while doing so. I finally take Suleiman’s capital (which does not have a new unique lux resource), start building another coliseum, and kill a whole bunch of units for extra XP on my CKN.
A misc thought: I want to emphasize just how many units my CKN killed - it was literally 10-20 turns of spam executing things. One shot kills a spearman, etc.
Turns 126-130: On turn 127 I hit gunpowder (and bulb rifling), and peace Suleiman for all but one of the cities he has (raze two). I was going to screenshot all my cities at this point but it seems somewhat pointless as they’re all screwed up from the Very Unhappy penalty I get for taking the two extra cities. Alas. Note that during the war with Suleiman I got a *lot* of promotes on CKN - two are range 3 now. At this point I had nine CKN and two Longswordsmen, but upgrade the 2 LSM and 2 CKN to (blitz, no other promote!) riflemen.
After this, I start moving a couple of CKN and a rifleman down towards oslo and the rest of my forces towards Catherine’s border ready to DoW her. I look at researching chemistry-fertilizer and am planning to bulb dynamite.
Turns 131-135: More manoeuvring to get forces in place for a war vs Catherine. On t133 my empire becomes just unhappy. I start producing riflemen. I finally get my fourth policy, and use it to adopt the +15% combat str thing from discipline.
T135 city screenshots -
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Turns 136-140: Move stuff into position to DoW Catherine. Catherine allies Belgrade and I have to spend 750g buying her out. DoW her. My unit maintinence is down to 36, which is rather good, and my income is floating at 40~ base +10 in trades with Elizabeth for horses/iron I am not using.
Turns 141-145: War vs Catherine continues. I pop another GG on t141 and immediately golden age. I pop another GS that I save for dynamite (will finish prereqs at t160).
The war vs Catherine is going well - Oslo joined in with some riflemen and is razing one of her cities, and up top all bar one CKN are range 3 now (which is totally ridiculous). On t144 two CKN hit range 3 indirect fire - these guys can now kill most AI armies by themselves. Essentially these turns are just letting cities grow, making sure happiness is okay with coliseum and killing waves of Catherine’s units with CKN (of which I lose one because of a bad placement).
Turns 146-150: More war vs Catherine. I have four range3 indirectfire CKN now, and they are unstoppable. I start razing st. Petersburg and my happiness dips dangerously low, so I start building more coliseum. Catherine starts running out of troops and I start moving in on Moscow (which I’ve been bombarding with the aforementioned range 3 indirect fire CKN). I also build up a bunch of extra gold, which I use to bribe Vienna. It declares war on Catherine. On turn 150 I take Moscow, which has seven wonders.
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At this point Catherine suddenly becomes very reasonable:
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Turns 151-155:
Suleiman randomly breaks our PoS and PoC, so I move a couple of riflemen and CKN planning to take his last city. I move all my other forces down towards Elizabeth. Cities at this point are still spamming riflemen, but really they could be doing anything - I can end the game with what I have on the map with no problems. On t155 Elizabeth and Suleiman DoW me. Apparently Elizabeth had allied Budapest before this, so I have to deal with some riflemen in my backyard and Suleiman’s city/remaining military, but Elizabeth is really far away. I guess she plans to take Vienna? I also adopt Rationalism for another GA here.
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I remove (and raze) Suleiman’s cities here before he can take mine. I pop another great general here (the sixth including the free one from honor, five of which have gone on GA), so I’ll end up with more GA uptime after the rationalism GA finishes.
Turns 156-160:
Finish fertilizer and pop the GS for dynamite, start building some artillery. I remove my scientist specialists at this point and put everything into production (#1 at 155mt in demographics), then start researching important techs like… philosophy. England takes Vienna.
Turns 161-165: England is heading towards me through Russia, so I redeclare war on Russia and start taking out their last city to get a good choke point on England with. Belgrade gives me a scout (previously a chariot archer and something else bad. Militaristic city states so terrible). I lose another CKN to a swordsman I didn’t see, but everything is looking awfully good otherwise.
(Later this turnset): My CKN are destroying ship of the line/swordsmen/random other bits Elizabeth is throwing at me, but I’m taking a fair bit of bombardment damage. I don’t lose any other units yet but I have to promote a rifleman with full heal twice.
Turns 161+: On turn 165 I finish Catherine’s last city. The war vs Elizabeth is long and grindy (longer and grindier than before, because pushing into territory vs longbowmen = super losses time) and I lose five? Riflemen and a CKN but it basically goes down the same way as before. She is super backward and does not have musketmen till t180 (wtf?). Eventually the CKN butcher. More golden age (two more gg’s, headed towards the 1400xp gg at end of game). I stop really paying attention to anything except crushing Elizabeth’s capital. Another chariot archer from Belgrade.
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I was very lax in doing anything except finishing wars from t150+ - if it was a larger map it’d be really important to found more cities here (and ofc stats would be better on demographics and there’d not be 20+ free happiness kicking around for a while). On a larger map you can still go after another person on CKN/riflemen/artillery, but after that you probably want to wait until mech infantry to finish stuff up. Elizabeth is one of the harder deity AIs to deal with lategame because longbowmen are scary.
So. Wall of text done. Hope you enjoy. =)
I’ve been playing a lot of Civilization 5 since release and I’m pretty confident on deity now. I haven’t seen any games posted, although there was some great discussion and I learned a lot reading posts by Martin Alvito et al. My intent in posting this is to spark some discussion on correct rex methods and plays and good timeframes for hitting tech x, or needing military, et cetera. If you have any feedback on mechanics or mistakes etc, please post it. (In terms of immediate mistakes I think I had too few workers, but in terms of exact math on stuff like worker vs paper maker, the worker does not really win out for like 36 turns assuming it just builds TP)
I find larger maps on deity get pretty frustrating - they’re still very winnable, but you have to wade through entire blankets of enemy troops. Small/tiny pangaea or oval maps are much more enjoyable for me, so. Note that I think small/tiny maps are a little easier too - they give you a better start because you do not have to worry about setting up as many production heavy cities in that the game will not go on for as many turns and you will not get the full benefit from the last x cities (also, you get a little better production in the midgame at the expense of research/GS). China are obviously just very solid and have all the tools you need to beat any map on any setting.
In this game I’ll be aiming for early expansion into a domination victory. My plan is to use warriors-swordsmen and archers for early defense while building up techs towards machinery for Cho-Ko-Nu (CKN), starting a war with CKN and longswords, and then hitting rifling asap after this (using GS to bulb metallurgy and rifling). Policy wise I plan to hit double xp in honor (mainly for range3 indirectfire CKN, but also double xp + CKN blitz helps to fuel a lategame economy with many great general golden ages). I do not plan to abuse any trade-dow-trade cascade stuff (because I feel like it will get fixed), but everything else is fair game.
Misc note: I used to go liberty for the +50% settler build, but apparently it is nothing like 50% really. So I don't do that now!
So, on to the game:
Our starting position -
Turns 1-5: Starting position looks good, so I found on the spot. I start building a scout, and start researching mining (to clear trees and because I’m aiming for masonry for the +happy and working that sweet marble square). I send my warrior out scouting, and he discovers Belgrade and a barbarian camp.
Turns 6-10: My scout finishes and I start a warrior. I discover two ruins, one giving +50g and one giving +1 population in Beijing. Mining finishes and I move on to masonry.
Turns 11-15: I discover another ruin (+30 culture) and immediately adopt honor. I start moving my warrior back towards Beijing to deal with any barbarians. My scout keeps scouting and discovers Oslo (friendly maritime, yay!).
Turns 16-20: My worker finishes and I start building a settler. I plan to found just to the north of me, in a location with gems and fish. I keep scouting and meet Catherine and Suleiman. Masonry finishes and I start hitting trapping to work those deer and build TP. Catherine offers OB and Suleiman offers a PoC. I accept both.
Turns 21-25: My scout discovers Suleman’s capital quite close to me, and meets Brussels. My worker improves the wheat near Bejing then moves on to the marble. Catherine offers a PoC, which I accept.
Turns 26-30: TGL built in a faraway land. Settler finishes in Bejing - I take my warrior and escort it north. I start another settler immediately. My scout discovers Catherine’s capital. I meet Elizabeth (from the west). A warrior turns up at my capital while I’m escorting the settler and I have to flee with my worker. I’m starting to think the land to my east is all unclaimed, which is great.
Turns 31-35: While taking this SS I realize I will be screwed on happiness unless I get BW and start working those gems, so I change my research to BW. Oh well. Elizabeth asks for a PoS vs Catherine, and I accept. On T33 Catherine completes Stonehenge and Suleiman completes the great lighthouse.
Turns 36-40: Finish second settler and start a scout. I would start a worker but I plan to steal one from Belgrade with the scout. Catherine DoWs Brussels. I finish BW, start chopping the jungle on gems, and hit trapping again. Catherine asks for a PoS vs Suleiman, and I accept. (How exactly do PoS work? I assume it makes her more likely to declare war but also likely to ask me to declare war, and if I say no she’s upset?).
Turns 41-45: Beijing finishes the scout and I start a warrior. Finish trapping and start pottery. Elizabeth asks for a PoC, and I accept. My scout steals a worker from Belgrade. Suleiman DoWs Brussels. I found Guangzhou near some gold. Suleiman gets upset with me settling near him and I tell him I’ll refrain from doing so in the future (which is true - I have all the cities I want up there right now). I finish researching… whatever I was researching and start sailing (so I can hit whales for happiness).
At this point I realize I’ve screwed up the screenshots I was taking somehow. Oops. I will not screw this up in the future.
Turns 46-50: Colossus, Hanging Gardens and Pyramids built on turn 47. I start another settler in Beijing. Elizabeth and Catherine offer OB, I accept. My worker finishes the mine on the gems a turn before my population expands, taking me from 0-4 happiness. I move him to the gold at Guangzhou to boost this further. Oslo wants a barbarian encampment destroyed, so I send my new warrior towards it. My second scout is killing barbarians at the place I’m planning to found my fourth city (58% bonus with honor). Sailing finishes and I start writing.
Turns 51-55: Catherine gets Oracle at t53. Writing finishes. I get enough culture for the free-GG policy but pass for now because I don’t want to pay the maintinence costs.
Turns 56-60: I start researching Archery. My fourth settler finishes and I head towards the dye to my east to get a fourth city up. Beijing starts work boats so I can hit a whale resource there. On turn 60 I bribe Oslo for 500g, and now need to wait a few turns to hit the whales south of Beijing.
Turns 60-65: Suleiman asks me to DoW on Catherine and I refuse. I destroy the encampment for Oslo for a lot of extra influence. I have a bunch of extra happy right now so I sell whales to Suleiman for 300g (I could have probably done this earlier and bribed Oslo earlier). All my cities are building Paper-Makers, I keep scouting, and start researching iron working.
Turns 66-70: A barbarian Trireme turns up at Shanghai and starts costing me +3/turn. Frustrating. I still have not found Elizabeth. Cities are still building paper-makers. I discover Venice, another maritime state, but it is hostile. A scout dies to two barbarians - I’d left it on fortify until healed and stopped paying attention.
Turns 71-75: I start a fifth settler, though I still only have two workers. I feel like this is probably optimal given that I have so much jungle, and that paper-makers are > workers for 30 turns or so. Catherine asks me to DoW on Suleiman and I refuse. IW finishes and I hit engineering. I ally Venice, who are hostile, but still maritime which is awesome.
Turns 76-80: More of the same - not much scouting, but clearing out barbarians near me, starting a couple of workers to upgrade tiles and pick up iron so I can upgrade my warriors to swordsmen.
Turns 81-85: I found my fifth city. The maritime states are kicking in (I had to give Venice another 250g) and my income and production are quite high, but my military is worryingly terrible. Other than this I have paper makers in my first four cities, three workers with a fourth coming out soon, two allied maritime states, enough lux resources to not need to build Colosseums yet (this is very awesome - Colosseums are like -3.75gpt 187.5 hammers for 5 happiness (average’d), vs allying a maritime state for +2 food in all cities -7~gpt 500g up front before patronage).
Turns 86-90: Catherine DoW’s Suleiman. I’m rushing some military and letting cities grow. Workers are improving resources where possible and other tiles where not. I also pop a great general from fighting barbarians. On turn 90 I hit engineering.
Turns 91-100: Scrambling more military here. I pop one great scientist that I save, and keep two cities running sci specialists so I’ll have two more within 50t. One will go when I bulb metallurgy and rifling, and another will go on bulbing dynamite later. Suleiman makes peace with Catherine. I have no idea where Elizabeth is (still), but she just entered the renaissance era. I upgrade my warriors to swordsmen, position my GG nicely, take the honor policy for a free GG and burn him on a golden age. I’m heading toward steel researchwise, and everything is looking rather good.
Turns 101-105: I set up for war near Suleiman, start setting up trade routes, cities keep growing, squares keep getting improved.
Turns 106-110: Ready for war vs Suleiman.
I attack -
Suleiman retaliates… by stealing a worker.
I basically kill all his stuff here with my CKN fuelled retaliation, and do not lose a unit. I am building a coliseum for the first time here because as I start taking cities I’m going to need a little extra happiness.
At this point everything is looking rather good. I’m planning to upgrade my swordsmen to longswordsmen and head towards Suleiman with everything there, keep pumping some CKN that will be upgraded to riflemen in future, connect everything with roads to boost my income up… find Elizabeth, and roll through Suleiman then Catherine.
Turns 111-115: I lose a swordsman to three spearmen after not noticing a road (oops). Catherine declares war on Oslo and I start building some scouts to block her units there.
Turns 116-120: Catherine has a loot of units at Oslo, and I don’t know if my scouts will be in time. My CKN are still murdering everything of Suleiman’s coming towards the choke point I have at Bursa. I want to emphasize that this is the ‘right’ way to play a war on deity - let the enemy come to you, don’t push too hard, kill all his stuff, take almost no losses, get a bunch of XP. I get another great general and golden age it here too. I finally take Bursa with a longswordsman, raze it, and move my military up a little. My income is high because of GG fuelled golden ages, but my military expenses are getting pretty bad. Trade networks + cities growing is helping out, and I just started building a couple of coliseum to deal with growing cities + annexing Suleiman’s capital when I do. I finally discover England! As I’m finally getting scouts to Oslo and grimacing at my military upkeep, Catherine makes peace with it, then declares she’s protecting it. Jerk.
Turns 121-125: At this point in the game I’m building coliseum, about to get gunpowder and the two GS needed for rifling (so I keep up CKN production to get blitz riflemen). My production is really high, gold is nice, golden age uptime is probably 50%+, and I’m closing in on Suleiman’s capital. I lose one more CKN while doing so. I finally take Suleiman’s capital (which does not have a new unique lux resource), start building another coliseum, and kill a whole bunch of units for extra XP on my CKN.
A misc thought: I want to emphasize just how many units my CKN killed - it was literally 10-20 turns of spam executing things. One shot kills a spearman, etc.
Turns 126-130: On turn 127 I hit gunpowder (and bulb rifling), and peace Suleiman for all but one of the cities he has (raze two). I was going to screenshot all my cities at this point but it seems somewhat pointless as they’re all screwed up from the Very Unhappy penalty I get for taking the two extra cities. Alas. Note that during the war with Suleiman I got a *lot* of promotes on CKN - two are range 3 now. At this point I had nine CKN and two Longswordsmen, but upgrade the 2 LSM and 2 CKN to (blitz, no other promote!) riflemen.
After this, I start moving a couple of CKN and a rifleman down towards oslo and the rest of my forces towards Catherine’s border ready to DoW her. I look at researching chemistry-fertilizer and am planning to bulb dynamite.
Turns 131-135: More manoeuvring to get forces in place for a war vs Catherine. On t133 my empire becomes just unhappy. I start producing riflemen. I finally get my fourth policy, and use it to adopt the +15% combat str thing from discipline.
T135 city screenshots -
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Turns 136-140: Move stuff into position to DoW Catherine. Catherine allies Belgrade and I have to spend 750g buying her out. DoW her. My unit maintinence is down to 36, which is rather good, and my income is floating at 40~ base +10 in trades with Elizabeth for horses/iron I am not using.
Turns 141-145: War vs Catherine continues. I pop another GG on t141 and immediately golden age. I pop another GS that I save for dynamite (will finish prereqs at t160).
The war vs Catherine is going well - Oslo joined in with some riflemen and is razing one of her cities, and up top all bar one CKN are range 3 now (which is totally ridiculous). On t144 two CKN hit range 3 indirect fire - these guys can now kill most AI armies by themselves. Essentially these turns are just letting cities grow, making sure happiness is okay with coliseum and killing waves of Catherine’s units with CKN (of which I lose one because of a bad placement).
Turns 146-150: More war vs Catherine. I have four range3 indirectfire CKN now, and they are unstoppable. I start razing st. Petersburg and my happiness dips dangerously low, so I start building more coliseum. Catherine starts running out of troops and I start moving in on Moscow (which I’ve been bombarding with the aforementioned range 3 indirect fire CKN). I also build up a bunch of extra gold, which I use to bribe Vienna. It declares war on Catherine. On turn 150 I take Moscow, which has seven wonders.
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At this point Catherine suddenly becomes very reasonable:
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Turns 151-155:
Suleiman randomly breaks our PoS and PoC, so I move a couple of riflemen and CKN planning to take his last city. I move all my other forces down towards Elizabeth. Cities at this point are still spamming riflemen, but really they could be doing anything - I can end the game with what I have on the map with no problems. On t155 Elizabeth and Suleiman DoW me. Apparently Elizabeth had allied Budapest before this, so I have to deal with some riflemen in my backyard and Suleiman’s city/remaining military, but Elizabeth is really far away. I guess she plans to take Vienna? I also adopt Rationalism for another GA here.
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I remove (and raze) Suleiman’s cities here before he can take mine. I pop another great general here (the sixth including the free one from honor, five of which have gone on GA), so I’ll end up with more GA uptime after the rationalism GA finishes.
Turns 156-160:
Finish fertilizer and pop the GS for dynamite, start building some artillery. I remove my scientist specialists at this point and put everything into production (#1 at 155mt in demographics), then start researching important techs like… philosophy. England takes Vienna.
Turns 161-165: England is heading towards me through Russia, so I redeclare war on Russia and start taking out their last city to get a good choke point on England with. Belgrade gives me a scout (previously a chariot archer and something else bad. Militaristic city states so terrible). I lose another CKN to a swordsman I didn’t see, but everything is looking awfully good otherwise.
(Later this turnset): My CKN are destroying ship of the line/swordsmen/random other bits Elizabeth is throwing at me, but I’m taking a fair bit of bombardment damage. I don’t lose any other units yet but I have to promote a rifleman with full heal twice.
Turns 161+: On turn 165 I finish Catherine’s last city. The war vs Elizabeth is long and grindy (longer and grindier than before, because pushing into territory vs longbowmen = super losses time) and I lose five? Riflemen and a CKN but it basically goes down the same way as before. She is super backward and does not have musketmen till t180 (wtf?). Eventually the CKN butcher. More golden age (two more gg’s, headed towards the 1400xp gg at end of game). I stop really paying attention to anything except crushing Elizabeth’s capital. Another chariot archer from Belgrade.
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I was very lax in doing anything except finishing wars from t150+ - if it was a larger map it’d be really important to found more cities here (and ofc stats would be better on demographics and there’d not be 20+ free happiness kicking around for a while). On a larger map you can still go after another person on CKN/riflemen/artillery, but after that you probably want to wait until mech infantry to finish stuff up. Elizabeth is one of the harder deity AIs to deal with lategame because longbowmen are scary.
So. Wall of text done. Hope you enjoy. =)
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