Clash of Deity War(Peace)mongers 2 - BTS - Zara Yaqob

[ABigCivFan]

I went for Astro since I wanted to trade for resources from the other Conti(for faster growth), I have a good amount of tradable excess res, also those guys might provide some good back-fill tech trades. I might be able to trade Astro to Mensa for Nationalism.

Stone and Marble are huge help. I was able to get Sistine and Univ of Sankor.

Since all religions are founded on our "Tech club" conti, it will be very interesting to go the cultural route with our trait and Sistine + multiple religions.

I am no expert in cultural victories, but this game really is playing into our strength. Tried built Ank Wat but Mensa beat me to it, imagine 4+ Ank Wat/Sistine/Representation enhanced priests in each city ..... Guess I have to take it from Mensa...

 

[Rusten]

Up until 1360 BC.

Spoiler :

Settled on the marble. Awesome land this time around. Hannibal founded Buddhism and spread it to Darius while MM founded Judaism - I smell conflict
I'll probably have 3 choices;
A: Make MM my best buddy and war with him against Han/Darius
B: Ignore the whole thing and let them play it out while teching
C: Join in on the Buddha side and wipe MM off the map

Which one it will be I'll decide when the game matures, but revenge on Han sounds sweet.

Managed to set up 2 border cities to the south-west and west before the AI got there. Should have plenty of time before I need to claim the northern area.
Citymap so far:



Wow at Gondar! That's 8 resources in the BFC for a single city and it's even settled on a hill for defense. Would provide a great stronghold vs MM if I go for option C. Lalibela will get cottaged up and later possibly set as Capital as a commerce powerhouse. Planning on doing a FE for the most part with the remaining cities.

Future cities:



Spot D would be really good if I can get there before Darius. I'll have the northern part completely sealed off and can take my time settling it. I would have to move really fast to get there in time but it's not very important. I already have fish and cow, although it would grow big and be great for trade and specialists, even has a lake to irrigate from to add food. Blue dots being future city sites but not in a hurry getting settled. The arrow spot and the desert tile has a fish resource to work with. Seems I'll be having a lot of coastal cities, so fast Astronomy is an idea for trade routes to the other continent.

I'm off to a good start I think.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Up until 1360 BC.

Spoiler :

Settled on the marble. Awesome land this time around. Hannibal founded Buddhism and spread it to Darius while MM founded Judaism - I smell conflict
I'll probably have 3 choices;
A: Make MM my best buddy and war with him against Han/Darius
B: Ignore the whole thing and let them play it out while teching
C: Join in on the Buddha side and wipe MM off the map

Which one it will be I'll decide when the game matures, but revenge on Han sounds sweet.

Managed to set up 2 border cities to the south-west and west before the AI got there. Should have plenty of time before I need to claim the northern area.
Citymap so far:



Wow at Gondar! That's 8 resources in the BFC for a single city and it's even settled on a hill for defense. Would provide a great stronghold vs MM if I go for option C. Lalibela will get cottaged up and later possibly set as Capital as a commerce powerhouse. Planning on doing a FE for the most part with the remaining cities.

Future cities:



Spot D would be really good if I can get there before Darius. I'll have the northern part completely sealed off and can take my time settling it. I would have to move really fast to get there in time but it's not very important. I already have fish and cow, although it would grow big and be great for trade and specialists, even has a lake to irrigate from to add food. Blue dots being future city sites but not in a hurry getting settled. The arrow spot and the desert tile has a fish resource to work with. Seems I'll be having a lot of coastal cities, so fast Astronomy is an idea for trade routes to the other continent.

I'm off to a good start I think.

stealing the sweet spot for Gondar. I was there 1920BC and MM already beat me to the spot.

Spoiler :

Also your future plan is nice, but most likely the barbs will interfere, you ll need some Axe/Swords to clear them out. NW spots will likely be taken by Darius. By definetly try to secure the stone next, anything else can wait.

 

[Rusten]

stealing the sweet spot for Gondar. I was there 1920BC and MM already beat me to the spot.

Spoiler :

Also your future plan is nice, but most likely the barbs will interfere, you ll need some Axe/Swords to clear them out. NW spots will likely be taken by Darius. By definetly try to secure the stone next, anything else can wait.

Spoiler :

Yea, I'd definitely need some troops for that. Currently getting an axeman in Gondar, but as of right now a settler isn't the highest priority, I need more workers first to improve my land. I sacrificed some early improvement and growth claiming those 2 cities already settled. They're sooooooo good I just had to make sure they'd be mine. I will most likely settle city E and the stone next. I'm usually not a fan of making a lot of wonders, but I guess that if ever this would be the game to do it. Both marbe and stone within reach and a capital high on production.

 

[ABigCivFan]

I value stone highly for the following reasons:

1. It is very very rare and has very high trade value.

2. You will have some coastal cities, stone speeds up Moai Statues

3. It speeds up Oxford/Ank Wat/UoSankore/WestPoint/Cathedrals and etc. even if you dont get these wonders, cash conversion from hammers for partial finish is 1:2 with stone.

4. overall it gives you a lot more options, especially if you decide to go cultural.

 

[Rusten]

Me too. Personally I find stone much more useful than marble, which I often sell to the highest bidder later. Usually go for Taj Mahal, Mausoleum of M and The Great Library, but after that the marble is spent basically. The amount of useful stone wonders is huge in comparison.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Me too. Personally I find stone much more useful than marble, which I often sell to the highest bidder later. Usually go for Taj Mahal, Mausoleum of M and The Great Library, but after that the marble is spent basically. The amount of useful stone wonders is huge in comparison.

That being said, I would still take Marble over Stone.

NE/HE are must have, GL is the most important wonder and realistic wonder to snatch on Deity and helps so much with the overall early game (it gives 3 sources of GS birth and 8 GP pts alone!). If not Philosophical, GL is the best means for a player to bulb his way to Liberalism.

And Taj, excellent and achievable if you win the Lib race and take Nationalism as free tech.

Edit: Stone in Capital is a different story. I would take early SH+GW+Pyramid over GL

Maybe we should make a poll on this topic.

 

[Rusten]

All good points. The marble wonders have a lot of synergy, that I'll give them. They're also deity-able. GL leads to liberalism, which leads to Taj Mahal and a golden age which could be boosted with Mausoleum of M. I can't remember the last time I got marble on deity though, so I'm not sure if MoM is possible to get. It's high priority for the AI isn't it? Can try it regardless, the cash returned shouldn't be too bad even if I fail.

Beelining GL in my game after pottery atm too. NE+GL = 16 scientist points which will certainly give me Liberalism first.

Edit:

Stone in Capital is a different story. I would take early SH+GW+Pyramid over GL

That was what I was thinking when comparing them, a swap of the marble and stone resource. The stone needs to be close for full use unlike marble which can be delayed until Aesthetics.

 

[Snaaty]

He could here them coming… …how could he have misjudged the situation that severely… …last time he checked, and he new he only checked about 10 month (turns) ago, the Persian military strength was about the double size then those of Ethiopia.

And the guns… …those evil rifles… …they stood no chance with their bows, and even their best knights and elephant riders were taken down that easily.

How could it be possible, that they have formed such huge army that quickly, only by handing rifles to mere citizens, without proper training?

…

He knew he would die that day, die in Susa, the last Persian town still trying to put up some resistance… …and it was only 10 days (turns) ago that the evil Ethiopians had declared on them, but within 3 days (turns), most of their army had been destroyed, lured into a trap near one of the Ethiopian borderland cities, and then his cities had fallen like dominos, and within only 7 days (turns), his last city was about to go down, and he would die, die in the year 1130 AD…

Spoiler :

View attachment 168365

This time I joined in time, and had a little spare time this evening to do some excessive fighting… …Hannibal is next, only Mansa will be a little bit more difficult, because he was my trading partner and I fuelled his teching pretty efficient (and mine broke down a little because of the war and the excessive whipping and drafting)…


View attachment 168366

I settled on the elephants, fist city went into the jungle, then two along the river, and one up north, then backfilling and barbslaying

...

Concering stone or marble in BFC:

I´d rather have 3 food resouces then marble, cows and gold

 

[Rusten]

Update #2 1360 - 275 BC.

Spoiler :

Diplomacy is getting very complicated as Darius switched from Buddhism (Han) to Judaism (MM). Think Hannibal will attack MM very soon, he hates him. Planning on making a scout to locate his stack(s) of doom asap.

Shortly after the previous update Darius decided to make a city close to mine on the river heading west. Given this extra time I decided to go for spot D with the cattle and fish. The barbs had also been kind enough to settle a city exactly where I wanted to put it for stone. Thanks guys!
Darius was actually on his way up there with a settler, but the moment my city's cultural borders went up he retreated.



Decided to wait trading Aesthetics around until the GL was 1-3 turns away from completion to make sure I'd get it. Looking back at the previous challenge I found some horrible play so this time I wanted to be extra careful. Lacked Mathematics, so after pre-chopping some forests I traded it to Darius and Hannibal. Didn't trade with MM because I'd get negative modifiers with Hannibal and I've learned to respect him. Thinking of chopping The Panthenon next as I know the AI's just got their hands on Aeshtetics. It's a wonder I almost never build, but it would be very useful in this game.





Aksum the same turn I traded Aesthetics around. Chopping those forests with my new mathematics tech.



Very happy with my play so far compared to last time. Payed much more attention in general. Managed to settle a very big area using the creative trait and the AI's are unlikely to attack me any time soon. They hate each other too much for that. At a low point when writing in terms of science, but that's because the GL isn't done yet and I'm busy getting workers instead of specialists in my other cities. Just a quick phase before I get courthouses and libraries up and running. Next up, race to liberalism.

 

[Johan^^]

Played up until 1000BC. Managed to due some aggressive settling with my 2. and 3. cities. I would very much like to have some feedback on my game, since i´m not use to deity.

Spoiler :

I will let the pictures due most of the story telling

Settled the capital on the elephants to get the bonus hammer for a faster start.

South and north empire view: (the red dots mark city locations that I plan to settle, the 4? is the planned location for my 4. city.)



So far my plan is to make the 2. city my GP farm with GL and NE due to the vast amount of Food resources. It might as well be the 3. city, BUT the diplo situation tell another story. Hannibal and MM share religion. Daruis founded his own. This will cause trouble and i would deffinitly like to be om Hannibal´s side . Have both religions, so can choose my side as i want to.


I stranded at a crossroad, where i dont know what to do. Basically I am not use to the tech trading/ best tech paths on deity. I have started on the Litt route, but non of the AI´s got Alphabet yet , thus i can not backfill the techs i want to. I would like to get calendar fast for resources, though i still need to trade for IW. Litt and GL will speed up the tech rate, though i still need Mys and Poly to do that.
Overview of my techs:




Units:

The save :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/108143/jgoody_BC-1000.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Snaaty]

Like said before, this time I’m earlier to join and still have the hope of finishing this game. So far I’m doing fine, sticking to the timeline (rifling around 1000 AD). Time for the report (was too tired last night… …and too busy fighting Pesia):

Spoiler :

I moved my starting settler on the elephants to settle, to get the initial boost of 1 hammer. Settling on the marble, like some of you did might have been even better, but I didn’t consider this (my bad). No archery this time, because bronze was in BFC. No luck with huts, only popped second scout, experience, map and about 30 gold. Lost both scouts and a warrior to babs not much later. My first two blocking cities in 1640 AD:

View attachment 168384


The early and far expansion crippled my research a little, but heaps of cottages along the river brought me up again. Traded Aest around in 775 BC (just doing some turns into Alpha), and right now I’m busy building up an army of Axes, to conquer the North (settled by barbs):

View attachment 168385


The north got conquered, but I made a stupid mistake:

View attachment 168386


I only razed and replaced one of the barb cities, the other I kept, only to realize next turn, that the barbs missed the ideal spot (grabbing the stones)… …ARGHHH(again).

The capital built the GL and NE, and right now is busy generating GS. The first I used to bulb Phil, because I was a little short on GS, but the second is scheduled to build the academy. I was first to Phil in 50 BC btw. I also researched drama right after CoL, because Persia was doing some severe culture pressure on my borderland cities. The plan now is to trade Phil + Drama for CivilS with Mansa and then use Phil to do some backfilling (still no Calendar and such). I initially planned to ally myself with Darius, because I will kill him first (and therefore the techtrades wont save him, around 1000 AD is simply to early for an AI to defend against rifles and I would have had a chance to vassalize the other two BEFORE reaching rifles), only to find out that I had to ally myself with Mansa, because the other two idiots had failed to spread their state religion to my capital (and I wanted to run Pacifism right away)(again)

Got lib around 400 AD, then headed right for Rifling. Hannibal declared on Mansa, but they were both deadlocked in an eventless fight for centuries. Then Darius sided with Mansa, and Mansa managed to take a city from Hannibal shortly after. Hannibal made peace with Mansa, and took one of Darius cities not much later… …stupid Darius, should have kept to himself(again). To prevent my first target from getting vassalized by Hannibal, I bribed Mansa in the war again, finally loosing my techlead on him completely, and not much later, a general peace treaty was signed.

Mansa built the AP and so I had to spam his religion to all my cities. Next election proved, that Hannibal and I had in fact enough votes for a blocking majority (hehehe)

Overview over our continent at 1000 AD, Mansa is my religious and trading buddy and we are the biggest and strongest factions now (Mansa 13 cities, me 9). Darius (5 cities) and Hannibal (8 cities):

View attachment 168387


My plans for the next turnsets:

1. Eliminate Darius (already done)
2. Take the 4 northern cities from Hannibal (soon to come)
3. Gathering experience for our army while going through 1 and 2, while teching to Steel, then chew a little on Mansa (his research is really massive right now, innitially fuelled from myself(again))


And the tech situation:

View attachment 168388


Mansa and I are far, far, far away (Mansa mainly because I had to do lots of trades in his favour earlier...). From the other conti I only have met Ceasar (huge 20 city empire but backwards) and Ragnar (looser, but not vassalized so far)

@ Johan^^:

Looks good so far, you have taken a similar appraoch then I have. Two comments:

Build up an army of 8 Axes and take the barb city of Illinois to prevent Persia from settling there
You shouldn´t have researched Math yourself, better go for Aest directly next time. The AI´s on deity will reach Alpha between 1100 and 800 BC usually, and you can trade Aest for Math pretty easy

 

[Rusten]

Spoiler :

Think Hannibal will attack MM very soon, he hates him.

250 BC:

Spoiler :

Haha, just resumed my game and the turn after my update Hannibal does in fact declare on MM. Guess I'm getting quite used to Hannibal, I can practically read his mind.

620 AD:

Spoiler :

I'm the only one with sugar on the continent, so I managed to land 21 gold per turn exporting it. Not bad at all at this early stage (made the deal at 200 ad-ish). But........................



Baaaaaad! Not only did I lose the race, but the one who made it there was not in our tech club. 600 AD too, that's friggin' fast! Maybe I expanded too much, should've stopped at 6 cities, although I thought I was safe, didn't expect this. One of the military AI's got there first and that's really bad news. Maybe someone vassalised most of the other continent already.........

 

[ABigCivFan]

I am getting into some extremely intricate situiations..

Spoiler :

Around 1100AD now, Hannibal is doing very well fighting both Persia and Mali, it is really funny to track his stacks from East to the West and back fighting on 2 fronts. He beelined Mil Trad, skipping Edu/Liber and etc. He managed to capture 3 smaller border cities from the other 2.

However, MM is taking off in science after Liberalism, blazing ahead. He and Darius are friendly and developed a very dangerous "tech broker club", trading like mad.

I have Rifling on everyone, but need to get cannon before i can attack and my research is stalling. They have grenadiers and lots of Muskets, so a Rifle based army will take extreme causulty against fortified cities.

MM is 1 tech away from Assembly line, and I have to slow him down by all means. So I plan to use Hannibal to double team on MM, this should get Hun to be friendly to me and starting trading his Mil techs to me and together we might be able to slow down MM.

Can you imagine 2 Deity friendly Financial AI's with well developed lands cross-research-trading?? It is scary.. On the other hands, Hannibal with his huge highly promoted SODs are really not theat to me anymore since I have a good Rifle force. The Irony was early in the game, I tried everything to get Hannibal to fight both Darius/MM so he would not kill me, but the consequence is the 2 Strong Fin civs became allies and took off on science and become un-touchable. When that happens it will be immpossible to catch them up on research.

Hannibal is my best friend now and a quick and decisive war against MM is the only hope now, it sucks MM has Status of Zues ..

 

[Rusten]

I am getting into some extremely intricate situiations..

Spoiler :

MM is 1 tech away from Assembly line...

Can you imagine 2 Deity friendly Financial AI's with well developed lands cross-research-trading?? It is scary..

Spoiler :

Ouch & touché. MM will be hard to finish any time soon if he starts turtling with his Infantry, but at least you have the advantage of knowing what you're up against. I'm still ignorant as to what's going on on the other continent. A dominant Julius Caesar perhaps, or Ragnar with 30 coastal cities.....
Whoever is over there finished the UoS at 325 AD, also a scary thought.
Got a caravel headed over there currently while researching Astronomy, hopefully it won't be as bad I fear. MM and Darius switched to mercantilism, so I'm in dire need of some trade routes.

 

[Snaaty]

@ ABigCivFan:

I also had to gnaw through Darius, who had the Statue of Zeus... ...WW was at +3 after 6 turns of war in my major cities.

Good only that Darius didn´t last very long

...

@ Rusten:

In my game it´s Rome that went off on the other conti with 20-30 cities. To be save, you have to aim at lib before 600 AD (that the earliest the AI can get in normally)

...

@ all:

Time to take on Hannibal now in my game, lets see what 40 rifles and a bunch of spies and trebs can do.

My spies reported that Hannibal has a mobile force off about 30 units and the best he can field are curassiers, so I´m pretty confident.

Since cannons are through in a few turns only, it might (hopfully) be another quick war

 

[ABigCivFan]

JC is the top dog on the other conti in my game as well, already took KK and Ragnar vassle. have not heard from Cathy yet, but she seems to possess a large land mass from traded mini-map.

 

[Turinturambar]

Late to start, but first to finish.

Cultural Victory in 1745 AD. Played a total peacemonger, who killed about 6 nonbarbs units.

Spoiler :

Settled on the marble, beelined to the oracle after the absolutely necessary techs and built it in 1720 BC. Took metalcasting. Next wonder was temple of artemis (1200 BC), then beeline to (great library) 350 BC and music for the great artist and sistine in (125 AD). Temple and oracle gave me lots of early great prophets, which paid for the initial rapid expansion.
Got 6 cities, 5 in extremely good locations and one decent fishing village.

After music I traded/researched for civil service and started the liberalism beeline. Built University of Sankore in 540 AD and got liberalism in 800 AD. The only decent tech to take was Nationalism, which almost everyone already had .

Next beeline was to biology to fully exploit the +2 culture per specialist from sistine with a massive farm economy. The only city that got cottages was my floodplains oxford city.

Researched constitution after biology (Would have been a lot smarter to do so before going through the whole chemistry/sci meth/biology tree but oh well ).

After biology came the run for radio and mass media, managed to get rock and roll, hollywood, civilized jewelers and creative constructions. Shut off research afterwards and watched my 3 citys climb to the 50 k mark with ~800 culture/turn. Bombed 3 great artist in the city lagging behind due to not being the wonderfilled capital or hermitaged and got all three legendary on the same turn.

Cathy and Julius declared war on me at some point, but Julius got immediately declared a heathen via my popely might and never set foot in my territory. Cathy managed to land 4 trebuchets and 2 cuirassiers, which weren´t that problematic for my rifles.

My whole island was happy confucius land until darius got philosophical and switched to taoism in 300 BC. I kinda panicked at that point, because my cities were all bordering darius and I had 1 sword, 1 chariot and 4 archers at that point (there might have also been a few warriors left, but I´m not sure ) . Thankfully hannibal immediately declared against him and they both spent several 100 years with senseless warring.
Mansa was a crazy techer/trader as usual when left unchecked, most of the time 10+ techs ahead of me, but he decided to go for cultural instead of building a shiny spaceship, so no problem there.
As expected the other continent with all the warmongers was hopelessly backwards, except for Julius. Poor Ragnar didn´t even have the printing press when Darius already had Artillery.

The three legendary cities at the end of the game:

Spoiler :

And the map of my cities:

Finally the save:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/75082/jgoody_AD-1740.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[ABigCivFan]

Late to start, but first to finish.

Cultural Victory in 1745 AD. Played a total peacemonger, who killed about 6 nonbarbs units.

Talk about playing a civ to its strength

Imagine a lowly 30 building gives 25% cultural boost when you are generating 500 culture/turn. Simply amazing, just remember to whip/chop/rush them before hitting Astro

I did set up 3 cities for a possible cultural win, stuffing them with wonders/cathedrals and all religious buildings, already got 100+ cutural in 1100AD in all 3 cities. getting Bio soon and couting on Sistine to pull me through. Teaming with Hannibal to whack MM is still in the plans...

 

[Turinturambar]

Yeah the Stele is really an amazing UB. It´s basically a cathedral at half strength for cheap that is among the earliest available buildings.
It´s not that important for the culture win as such, because the ~5k total culture you get pre-astronomy are only a fraction of the 50k needed, so 1k more/less doesn´t matter that much.

But combined with the creative trait it allows you to completely dominate cultural wars in the BCs no matter which civ you face. You can safely settle next to enemy cultural borders, which allows you to choose the bestpossible city sites.