Monthly Deity Challenge #3 - France

Welcome to the third game of the unofficial Hall of Fame Monthly Deity Challenge series! The games in this series are played on Deity difficulty under the standard HOF rules, with a preset victory condition, map size, map type and game speed, and the leader choice is occasionally up to the player. All discussion is highly encouraged here, be it questions, strategy and leader choice tips, write-ups of your games or suggestions for future games of this series.

Settings:

• Expansion: Brave New World
• Victory Condition: Culture (though all victory conditions must be enabled)
• Difficulty: Deity
• Map Size: Standard
• Map Type: Continents
• Speed: Standard
• Leader: France (Napoleon)
• Opponents: Any
• Version: SV8
• Date: 1st June to 1st July 2015

Not a whole lot of Standard/Standard Deity CVs have been submitted to HoF so far. Fastest one is a T192 Sacred Sites game by glory7 as Poland on a Pangaea, and as for Continents, the record is held by Moriarte - T259 Brazil. Another noteworthy game is Moriarte's T260 victory as France on Huge/Standard/Continents.

The earliest finish date wins, with score as a tiebreaker. When the 1st July HOF update arrives, I'll compile a list of finishers and announce the winners.

Good luck!

I'll await a writeup before I even attempt. I used to love CV, but the BNW change made them sort of a slow slog. Excepting the SS variety.
Not sure what crack was being passed around at Firaxis but SV, CV and DV are all now all essenentially the same game of fast science to X, where X differs marginally.

I guess, if there is a question here, its how does one CV (the non-SS variety)? Heh.

Ha. I actually just recently finished a couple games on similar settings. You'll see 'em in the HoF update tomorrow. For now, I'm the new record-holder on continents, with a T237 as the Netherlands. It's an interesting framework of settings... I'll probably return to it a bit later in the month, once I've gotten some distance.

I think that CV incentivizes wide play and conquest in general, and it REALLY incentivizes it if there's an easily-wipeable culture runaway. In my Netherlands game, I did a 3-city Liberty CompBow rush and cleared my continent early. Later discovered that the culture runaway was a nearby Korea on a small landmass who only had 3 cities. I Foreign Legion rushed him (always fun to brute-force Deity cities with melee units), and as a result the remaining culture leader had only ~12,000 culture at the time of my victory.

France should incentivize wide play even more due to Chateaux. I also played some France games and was very impressed with Chateaux -- lots of culture, lots of extra tourism, and LOTS of extra gold once you get Flight.

Finally, I'm interested in seeing the usage of Piety vs Aesthetics. Aesthetics seems to me like a very crappy tree that you complete almost entirely for the ability to Faith-buy Musicians. Piety is a much more appealing tree that has natural synergy with wide play, and if you go that route you can grab To the Glory of God and skip Aesthetics entirely. Of course, there is some risk of getting that Reformation belief sniped after you've already invested policies in Piety... but after testing a bit it seems that late-game culture generation is so strong that you can probably overcome that and just finish Aesthetics anyway if you really need to.

There are two options for fast CV, neither of which is similar to SV or DV.

One is to go Piety and get SS along with 2 faith bought buildings. This is a very wide strategy to get maximum and greatest number of religious buildings.

The other is to play a domination down to one player and isolate the remaining player to 1 city and use GMusicians to put tourism over the top. This one is more difficult on Deity obviously.

The longer game strategy is to play science to get Hotels up as soon as possible. This one is not likely to compete against the first two.

Manpanzee said:

Finally, I'm interested in seeing the usage of Piety vs Aesthetics. Aesthetics seems to me like a very crappy tree that you complete almost entirely for the ability to Faith-buy Musicians. Piety is a much more appealing tree that has natural synergy with wide play, and if you go that route you can grab To the Glory of God and skip Aesthetics entirely. Of course, there is some risk of getting that Reformation belief sniped after you've already invested policies in Piety... but after testing a bit it seems that late-game culture generation is so strong that you can probably overcome that and just finish Aesthetics anyway if you really need to.

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Sacred Sites will be superior to Glory of God in this one.

My setup would be a combination of Liberty, Piety, and Aesthetics.

Mesix said:

There are two options for fast CV, neither of which is similar to SV or DV.

One is to go Piety and get SS along with 2 faith bought buildings. This is a very wide strategy to get maximum and greatest number of religious buildings.

The other is to play a domination down to one player and isolate the remaining player to 1 city and use GMusicians to put tourism over the top. This one is more difficult on Deity obviously.

The longer game strategy is to play science to get Hotels up as soon as possible. This one is not likely to compete against the first two.

Click to expand...

Sacred Sites is REALLY difficult in Deity even more so with Continents. In fact I am almost convinced it is impossible unless there is a shallow water connection (although I have learned that saying impossible is not wise in this subforum).

I like the Piety approach and may explore it. I have not really played a CV that is not sacred sites or liberty liberation in a looong time. And I have never played Brazil. I will make time for this. Will probably wait for the first write up, as Smirk said, otherwise it is too much trial and error in a very long game.

Well, France is one civ I still need to VVV. I have already played a few continents games, so this one won't help me to take on the Map Quest. Real Life is probably going to limit me to 1-2 games this update.

Yeah...I think I will give this one a try!

Sacred Sites might not be enough to win just by itself, but 4 extra tourism per city is still quite tempting for a wide game I think.

vadalaz said:

Sacred Sites might not be enough to win just by itself, but 4 extra tourism per city is still quite tempting for a wide game I think.

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Yes well I meant ICS style SS, of course SS will help if we can get a religion with the 2 buildings, that will be tough in Deity. Open Liberty, 4 in Piety plus war, clean your continent, and late ICS I guess could work, sounds truly difficult and risky if you have a culture runaway in the second continent, we will be completely behind in science, oof.

Maybe turtling and tech hard, then go on the warpath once you get to the second continent with XBows? Or even Arty? As I said I will wait for the first write up, this is unknown territory for me. EDIT: I will have a look at the Glory7 win, but the guy is just phenomenal, I am guessing he went onto a rampage with the Pangea.

Dom game and Liberty Liberation? Can you kill a guy before he gets to 100 tourism in Deity? I guess not, they start with 2 cities, and free techs so unless you can capture their 2 cities before t29, that sounds impossible to me.

My first attempt and I am finding it difficult to get a religion. I got the 6th pantheon IIRC, but it was the one I wanted (I have 6 copper so Earth Mother seemed like a good choice). 4 AI civs have religions and 2 of them have already been enhanced, so probably no buildings left at this point. Perhaps I can spread AI religions to spam religious buildings for SS?

Mesix said:

My first attempt and I am finding it difficult to get a religion. I got the 6th pantheon IIRC, but it was the one I wanted (I have 6 copper so Earth Mother seemed like a good choice). 4 AI civs have religions and 2 of them have already been enhanced, so probably no buildings left at this point. Perhaps I can spread AI religions to spam religious buildings for SS?

Click to expand...

Yes, that is the biggest stumbling block to running Sacred Sites on Deity . Since you cannot be the Celts or Ethiopia in this one, best ways to insure early religion and building choices are as many of the below as possible

A) have faith wonder early
B) luck into a faith ruin after T30/35 or so before too many AIs get their pantheons and then have a faith pantheon - Cromagnus would go so far as to leave scouts hovering by ruins and wait until T30 or 35 to pop them hoping for faith
C) Get that faith pantheon relatively early through some combination of shrine/meeting religious CSes
D) Early enough expansion/shrines/Piety SPs but that has a lot of tradeoffs techwise.

If you are committed to SS and the above don't happen, rerolling or switching gears to a more standard/warlike culture win are your best options probably. Going down the SP tree to Sacred Sites while not having your own religion is not ideal, though if you conquer the AI with the religion, it is probably doable. If you are already into the Piety tree, you may be better off choosing Glory to God to buy those musicians in the event you don't have a religion for SS or wide civ happiness.

I have had some success with Immortal pure Sacred Sites on maps that allowed non-war-inducing expansion. Deity is a different animal though, and Bleidraner rightly states Continents makes it even harder. I did a Prince or King Sacred Sites continent game where the Liberty finisher was used on a great admiral to find the other continent before having to tech astronomy. Finishing Liberty while obtaining and the religion/Piety needed to beat Ai to Sacred Sites and get it online fast would be a tall order.

Bleidraner said:

EDIT: I will have a look at the Glory7 win, but the guy is just phenomenal, I am guessing he went onto a rampage with the Pangea.

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Nope, Glory7's Poland Deity Culture T192 win was pure Sacred Sites. Just from the log you can tell.

Pertinent log entry: 12 Poland has started worshipping a pantheon of gods. They have chosen the belief: One with Nature (+4 [ICON_PEACE] Faith from Natural Wonders)

No wonders built. No wars started. Lots of cities (well over 10, not sure exactly what city names are Polish)

I didn't actually load saves to see how far he teched and what tourism buildings he got if any.

----------

Pure SS here or even a mostly SS hybrid would be so much tougher without Poland's free SPs and without the Pangaea. I think it would have to go something like:

Have faith wonder/crazy desert folklore with the pantheon early
have your own continent, one big enough to share, or unit rush to conquer your continent to ICS to your heart's content
Liberty/Piety mix with enough culture to get SS relatively quickly after the expansion Liberty policies. Dispensing with Liberty seems tough on Deity, though i suppose if you are racing to beat Deity culture you might have to try it.
Shallow water connection, or crazy culture to finish Liberty for the Great admiral before astronomy while still getting SS.

Even then, it might not be enough to win purely on its own to beat the other approaches... the AI cultures up so fast on Deity

zenmaster said:

B) luck into a faith ruin after T30/35 or so before too many AIs get their pantheons and then have a faith pantheon - Cromagnus would go so far as to leave scouts hovering by ruins and wait until T30 or 35 to pop them hoping for faith

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T20 IIRC.

vadalaz said:

Fastest one is a T192 Sacred Sites game by glory7 as Poland on a Pangaea, and as for Continents, the record is held by Moriarte - T259 Brazil. Another noteworthy game is Moriarte's T260 victory as France on Huge/Standard/Continents.

Click to expand...

I got 180T CV with Brazil on great plains with game in my signature in HoF rules, but i forgot to submit it

I also got 163T CV with Spain on DCL terra map, though not in Hof rules http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13716730&postcount=190

zenmaster said:

No wonders built. No wars started. Lots of cities (well over 10, not sure exactly what city names are Polish)

Click to expand...

I counted 22 from his game's log

Bleidraner said:

In fact I am almost convinced it is impossible unless there is a shallow water connection

Click to expand...

I'm really not so familiar with continents map - is shallow water connection actually possible on normal continents map?

If yes, it would heavily favoured player who will be lucky and get it.

Mesix said:

The longer game strategy is to play science to get Hotels up as soon as possible. This one is not likely to compete against the first two.

Click to expand...

I can bet that if not shallow water connection it win.

Manpanzee said:

Finally, I'm interested in seeing the usage of Piety vs Aesthetics. Aesthetics seems to me like a very crappy tree that you complete almost entirely for the ability to Faith-buy Musicians. Piety is a much more appealing tree that has natural synergy with wide play, and if you go that route you can grab To the Glory of God and skip Aesthetics entirely. Of course, there is some risk of getting that Reformation belief sniped after you've already invested policies in Piety... but after testing a bit it seems that late-game culture generation is so strong that you can probably overcome that and just finish Aesthetics anyway if you really need to.

Click to expand...

I can agree that bonuses from aesthetics are not super great, but hardly can see what piety has better to offer except SS spam (again question of shallow water connection)

IronfighterXXX said:

I'm really not so familiar with continents map - is shallow water connection actually possible on normal continents map?

If yes, it would heavily favoured player who will be lucky and get it.

Click to expand...

I was curious too so I tested it a bit in IGE

4 billion/High sea level - 0 out of 15 maps had shallow water connections
4 billion/Low sea level - 3 out of 15

So it's possible, but rare. This is a small sample size and I think I got lucky with my low sea level rolls too, so the chance is likely much less than 1/5 even with low seas. And the chance to roll a good pantheon start with enough space to settle 20+ cities, get Sacred Sites and 2 faith buildings religion, have no AI run away so much you can't catch them with just SS tourism AND have shallow waters? Probably too low to even try

vadalaz said:

So it's possible, but rare. This is a small sample size and I think I got lucky with my low sea level rolls too, so the chance is likely much less than 1/5 even with low seas. And the chance to roll a good pantheon start with enough space to settle 20+ cities, get Sacred Sites and 2 faith buildings religion, have no AI run away so much you can't catch them with just SS tourism AND have shallow waters? Probably too low to even try

Click to expand...

Yes, it would be like win the lottery. I also won't try (I'm not big fan SS strategy anyway). Thanks for sharing!

I got off to a slow start. I did not found a religion. The AI spread a religion to me which allows me to build Pagodas and Cathedrals. Unfortunately, since no more religions can be founded, Sacred Sites is not available (just a wasted policy on the Piety tree now).

The game was just starting to get fun too.

I guess I will start a new game and prioritize religion more.

So my attempt at a French CV turned into a Science bail at turn 368…

The set-up:
Continent 1:
Napoleon on the South-West
Genghis on the South
Bismarck on the South-East
Attila in the middle (north of Genghis)
Theodora in the North

Continent 2 (West of Continent 1)
Morocco, Boudicca and Pacal in an East to West arrangement.

The real kicker was discovering AFTER astronomy that there was a navigable water pass to the other continent. Am I kicking myself for not scouting this properly? Yes, I am.

So the curtain goes up... Paris is founded next to a mountain on copper by a river with two gold and two more copper in reach. Coastal access and it would have been a dreamy start but C'est la vie...

Turn 16 and it’s a quick work steal from Genghis and a five turn war where not much happened.

Stumbled on a faith ruin and we went God-King because nobody gets religion on Deity, right? This was my only source of faith for 134 turns until we got Eastern Orthodoxied by Theodora - more about that later - whose religion had no dirt based faith generation qualities. With all the other zealots on the other continent, I was stuck with this one and no FPT. My faith balance remained sub-150 for the whole game.

Turn 40 and there’s war in the hood:Genghis and Attila v Bismarck.

Turn 53 and Genghis is send his army my direction so it’s a costly bribe to Attila to keep him away.

Managed to get Pyramids and Oracle during all the fighting and had my four cities up by turn 91 and things are looking reasonably good. Just Genghis and Attila keep sending troops my way and we enter a period economy sapping wars and war bribes.

Any time those guys were at peace with each other (or Attila with Theodora) then Genghis would pound on my city defences until he could be persuaded (with another war bribe to Attila post-peace treaty) to sod off.

Bismarck was carved up and swallowed just as I hit Education (turn 120).

Eventually, we met the others and found Pacal was going culture so, after a few patient attempts, Boudicca is eventually enticed to distract him. Normally an effective warmonger, she got owned - including the loss of Edinburgh and her last city to City States to take her out completely around turn 200.

Then entered the age of frustration as wars with Genghis continued to drain the coffers and we kept getting beaten to wonders a few turns from completion and finally lost the World’s Fair and International Games - silver in each to Pacal’s golds in each.

During that time Genghis got bolder and decided Attila’s number was up. At turn 297, Attila was put to the sword along with most of the city states on our little continent.

Still, Pacal and I were besties and Freedom buddies in an Autocratic world. Morocco took a patch of ice near me and I gifted another patch of ice to Pacal for the GM bombing and that’s where things went south.

Tourism ended up hitting around 440 or so by the end of the game (Sydney Opera House, Hermitage and Oxford in Paris with theming bonuses) but it was not going to be enough to beat Pacal. Discovered also near the end that there was still one religion that could have been founded...

So I dropped three atomic bombs on Genghis and flipped him the bird from my spaceship window as we took off for a better place.

RaidandTrade said:

So my attempt at a French CV turned into a Science bail at turn 368…

The set-up:
Continent 1:
Napoleon on the South-West
Genghis on the South
Bismarck on the South-East
Attila in the middle (north of Genghis)
Theodora in the North

Continent 2 (West of Continent 1)
Morocco, Boudicca and Pacal in an East to West arrangement.

The real kicker was discovering AFTER astronomy that there was a navigable water pass to the other continent. Am I kicking myself for not scouting this properly? Yes, I am.

So the curtain goes up... Paris is founded next to a mountain on copper by a river with two gold and two more copper in reach. Coastal access and it would have been a dreamy start but C'est la vie...

Turn 16 and it’s a quick work steal from Genghis and a five turn war where not much happened.

Stumbled on a faith ruin and we went God-King because nobody gets religion on Deity, right? This was my only source of faith for 134 turns until we got Eastern Orthodoxied by Theodora - more about that later - whose religion had no dirt based faith generation qualities. With all the other zealots on the other continent, I was stuck with this one and no FPT. My faith balance remained sub-150 for the whole game.

Turn 40 and there’s war in the hood:Genghis and Attila v Bismarck.

Turn 53 and Genghis is send his army my direction so it’s a costly bribe to Attila to keep him away.

Managed to get Pyramids and Oracle during all the fighting and had my four cities up by turn 91 and things are looking reasonably good. Just Genghis and Attila keep sending troops my way and we enter a period economy sapping wars and war bribes.

Any time those guys were at peace with each other (or Attila with Theodora) then Genghis would pound on my city defences until he could be persuaded (with another war bribe to Attila post-peace treaty) to sod off.

Bismarck was carved up and swallowed just as I hit Education (turn 120).

Eventually, we met the others and found Pacal was going culture so, after a few patient attempts, Boudicca is eventually enticed to distract him. Normally an effective warmonger, she got owned - including the loss of Edinburgh and her last city to City States to take her out completely around turn 200.

Then entered the age of frustration as wars with Genghis continued to drain the coffers and we kept getting beaten to wonders a few turns from completion and finally lost the World’s Fair and International Games - silver in each to Pacal’s golds in each.

During that time Genghis got bolder and decided Attila’s number was up. At turn 297, Attila was put to the sword along with most of the city states on our little continent.

Still, Pacal and I were besties and Freedom buddies in an Autocratic world. Morocco took a patch of ice near me and I gifted another patch of ice to Pacal for the GM bombing and that’s where things went south.

Tourism ended up hitting around 440 or so by the end of the game (Sydney Opera House, Hermitage and Oxford in Paris with theming bonuses) but it was not going to be enough to beat Pacal. Discovered also near the end that there was still one religion that could have been founded...

So I dropped three atomic bombs on Genghis and flipped him the bird from my spaceship window as we took off for a better place.

Click to expand...

R&T your write ups are just the best!