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

[ABigCivFan]

oh, so post Astro, the Stele does not give the 25% cutural boost anymore. Thanks for clarify that.

 

[Snaaty]

A short update from the warmongering version of Etiopia:

Spoiler :

What you see on this screen is what’s left of Hannibal’s mobile army… …right, nothing left… …except the small stack in the city of Kerko…


View attachment 168427

It took me 4 turns to take out his mobile forces at the cost of 4 rifles, killing about 30 Carthagian units. I simply gave up one of the newly conquered Persian cities, placing my stack next to it, killing all that moved in… …now I started my own advance, fist taking back our bait city, and also the first Carthagian city has fallen already. I will now divide my units in 2 stacks (15 rifles and some trebs each) to take the next two target cities, then reunite the healthy ones to one stack to take the last Carthagian city on our list, but that’s the plan for the next turnset…

So far, everything is proceeding as planned, have now contact with all other civs, and did some overseas trades. Unhappily I had to trade rifling to Mansa, because nobody else wanted to give me Astro and without it our war would have run dry (lack of happy resources). After this war is decided now, I can safely revolt to Free Religion and Republic. Btw, Mansa has already built the Statue of Liberty and is teching at incredible speed now (need to trim him ASAP a little)

Oh, and Ragnar declared on me... ???... ... (I will simply ignore him)

 

[ifinnem]

Would you guys mind posting saves as well as screenshots - that would be even more helpful for us guys learning
Very good so far!

 

[Snaaty]

Another short update from the warmongering version of Etiopia:

Hannibal managed to surprise me, and got Steel only 1 turn into the next turnset… …even 3 turns before I got it.

Spoiler :

Facing Cannons was annoying, but didn’t really slow us down. All it did was to force us to replace some losses by drafting, but since the first drafting session was more then 10 turns past, we weren’t bothered much. We lost the scorelead due to the new drafting session and also due to the fact that we started to whip some cannons, but we will recover soon…

View attachment 168472


And so it came, after 11 turns of warring against Hannibal, that the showdown near Hippo was inevitable at the end of this turnset. Hannibal’s new army you can see in the picture above, we are approaching with 27 rifles and 2 cannons... …the end of this war is near, because Hippo is the last of the 4 Carthagian cities we wanted to capture during this raid, and I don´t think Hannibal has any chance of preventing that, thus reducing Hannibal to 4 cities.

Then we will focus our attention a little on Mansa the techmonster…

I´ve run out of discspace so I can´t post the save, but I can e-Mail it to somebody for posting

...

Oh, and I´ve found out that I have forgotten to build the Maoi thingies and the Forbidden Palace will take care of them in the next turnset (hopefully)

 

[Rusten]

Did a little re-run from my 275 BC save up until 200 AD.

Spoiler :

Converted to Buddhism+organized religion and whipped infratructure in my 6 cities. Traded literature (which I forgot last time) for something like 500 gold and meditation. Think my pace to liberalism is faster this time with whipped monasteries and such. At least I was able to found Taoism, which is a good sign.



Don't like to reload saves, first time, but I wanted to know what could speed up my game. Trying to be friends with everyone didn't work. Need that religion civic online. We'll see if I get there before 600 AD this time around.

400 AD: Popped Great Artist - ~5% chance.........
475 AD: Popped Great prophet 3% chance (GA ~5% GS ~92%)

Meaning no Education bulb, and probably bye-bye Liberalism. Lady luck is not on my side this game..........

 

[Snaaty]

News from Zara berserk:

Spoiler :

Hannibal really tried to hold Hippo, launching a small counterattack with two catas and two chariots and really managed to dig up some more troops, placing altogether 23 defenders in Hippo… …didn’t save him, 27 rambo-rifles and two cannons took the city, only one cannon and one rifle were lost.

Then we vassalized Hannibal, and immediately sent our spies out to check on Mansa. His main army soon was located, and the scouting activities revealed not too many troops beside this stack (maybe 10-15 mobile units more)

View attachment 168473


Mansa only has cavalry on us so far, so not too bad either.

As you can see, our Rambo rifles are already in place, backed by some cannons, time to decide this game once and for all.

…

I also forced myself to finally check and specialized our cities and ordered the Forbidden Palace, Maoi Statues, Ironworks, MountRush and some courthouses+infra to be built/whipped.

Our offensive army contains:

about 45 rifles (some in Rambo mode, city raider 2 + strength 1-3) and about 15 cannons, most city raider 2

 

[ABigCivFan]

Latest updates:

Spoiler :

My coastal cities started humble as back-fill cities, but once the infrustruture are whipped in place (first the AP temples and Monasteries), they were pulling in 40+ trade route commerce and some 100+ /turn in the 1400-1500AD.

I hit MM's WFYBTA around Astro, but KK/JC/later Cathy become important trading partners and tugged me along.

I decided to play peacefully until i have a strong econ to contend with MM, so switched to Rep/FS/Caste/FM/OR for a long time, and 2 back to back GAge to get Assembly/Rail/Phy/Bio/Medicine (Sushi)/Elec/Refrig/Rocktry (Alumnum Inc). I was running Merchants like crazy in 2 cities during the GAges and timed them well to get 2 back-to-back merchants, one for cash and one saved for Sushi. Later a GS and saving for Aluminum Inc.

My econ was in good shape pulling in ~1000 arount 1300-1400AD. later swithed to Emancipation (1500AD) and spammed cottages in all suitable cities/tiles.

Running a farm heavy econ with 1 cottage city with Oxford. My cuture rate was so high i manged to push back rival's borders and settled 2 new city with most grasslands. After Bio, they grew to work all tiles quickly and were paying themselves via 4 foreign trade routes. So yes, we can still land-grab in the industrial age; at the expense of our neighbours

Cities are well specialized. Capital has NE/IW/levee as prod center, HE city(horse/cow/sugers) gets Mil Academy (from Facisam GG), Banana/suger city gets Globe and National part and serving as a great draft city in war time and GP farm/Science in peace time, Flood cottage city gets Oxford and Hermitage as the 3rd culture city.

I am not afraid of MM's techmongering anymore, he is really focused on getting all the late wonders and is fairly weak in Military..

 

[Snaaty]

Get in the ring, Mansa…

Spoiler :

After 3 turns of massive warfare, Mansa´s spirit of fighting back is mostly broken, we have him on the run. We have taken already 2 of his border cities and are now laying siege on 3 of his major cities, hoping to break his backbone within the next turns, but he has about 10 units in each of the cities we want to capture…

View attachment 168489


Another worrying development is that nobody wants to trade me Corporation, so I have to selfresearch it. Mansa already has all prerequisites for Infantry, so we really must hurry now…

Operation peacemaker:

Spoiler :

We have succeeded, and taken all 3 of our target cities in time, and another city on our way to our final destination, which is the city of Djenne. Djenne has lots of wonders and additionally the Statue of Liberty, which is mine...

View attachment 168490


Operation peacemaker has helped greatly in reducing our upkeep costs… …we have lost about 1/3 of our army… …but it was definitely worth it, since we have no need for our army anyways now, and now the rest of it will be used to take Djenne (it doesn´t really matter if there are infantry or not, because we simply will overwhelm the city with numbers). Sadly, most (or maybe even all) of our Rambo rifles have died...

 

[ABigCivFan]

Talk about a cottage littered landscape

You ve built quite some momentum there swing the hammer against everyone, !

 

[Snaaty]

AAARRRRGGGGG

Ethiopia hates Mansa

This ******* idiot simply wont capitulate... ...I´m now marching for his capital directly to end this onslaught... ...my losses are ginourmous... ...WW is up at +17 in the biggest cities (but I havent that much big ones left... ...busy whipping peacemaker cannons)... ...will give an update later on, once I have gnawed through stupid Mansa Ironfist...

 

[Rusten]

Talk about a cottage littered landscape

Indeed

Did a quick count on the situation in my spoiler, and it seems (unless I forgot how % maths works) the odds of not getting my GS in either one of the two pops was 1 out of 250.
Talk about bad luck, but at least it won't happen again the next 249 games I play.

Nice play Snaaty

 

[Snaaty]

Mansa still fights on…

Spoiler :

I´ve decided to use the big hammer on Mansa now, starting another round of whipping cannons… …his capital is down, but still, he wont capitulate… …since he still has one of the cities left he tried to get up for his cultural victory (of this I’m sure now, because Mansa had 3 cities cranking out culture like mad) and has about 10 techs on me I decided now to keep on warring until he capitulates or is dead… …or I’m getting killed by WW…

View attachment 168497


WW at 17 in my wannabe ironworks city:

View attachment 168498


The tech situation:

View attachment 168499


Mansa is already out of the game, with his 4 cities (2 of them are tundra/ice enclaves) left, so the game is already won, but I’m clawing through Mansa up to the end… …for the honour… …FOR THE DAMN HONOUR ALONE…

Ethiopian bodycount so far:

cannons: 21 down
trebs: 11 lost
rifles: 29 perished
spies: 12 failed and got slain
(and some other stuff in small quantity)

Kills: 200 - 250...

 

[Snaaty]

It’s finally over…

Spoiler :

Exactly 1500 AD, after I had beaten down most of the units Mansa had left in his third cultural stronghold, he finally agreed to vassalize to me. To keep him at least a little usefull (and to bring him up to cautious), I gave him back two cities, (Watala and Tatassweiofjsdkl)… …what a fight… …the final border:

View attachment 168500

 

[Turinturambar]

Interesting that Julius is so far behind in your game Snaaty. In my game he was the first to astronomy and had divine right already in 1020 AD and was missing only ~8 techs to your 1500 AD status.

 

[Rusten]

Yea, it's interesting how every game is different, even at the continent where we have no real possibility to sway things (except for religions founded). In your game you got Liberalism first in 800 AD, while in mine it was an opponent at 600 AD. I Guess that's the beauty of Civ and the random numbers everywhere. You'll never have the exact same game, even with the same starting position.

Spoiler :

What seems to be the standard is Julius beating up on Ragnar, but Ragnar's starting pos looked crappy IIRC so nothing special.

 

[Rusten]

Well, this game isn't treating me well. I decided to give it one more try (from scratch) and this time.....

Spoiler :

Darius beats me to Liberalism in 400 AD!!



That's the earliest I've ever seen in BTS. I'm even keeping up with MM in tech this game but Darius is on steroids. I didn't even get to trade with him (or let him tech broker with others for my techs) other than Aesthetics so he made it there single-handedly, he got philosophy by himself in 300 BC! Last time the 1 out of 250 GP thingie, and now this. The civ engine must be toying with me, this game is cursed.

Maybe I'll load up a Pangea game and rush him with Alex. This calls for a bloody revenge.

 

[ABigCivFan]

@Rusten

It seems the biggest problem in your game is Hannibal is sharing religion with Darius, and gave him no military pressure allowing Darius to take off in science. He is consistantly beating you to every major tech.

Better luck with your next try.

 

[futurehermit]

nice work snaaty, some very nice work

 

[CharonJr]

Hi,

I read the first open deity challenge and learned TONS of things there (would consider myself a monarch/emporer player) and when I saw this new challenge I wanted to give it a shot anyway to see if I really did learn something

Any comments are appreciated :

Spoiler :

I started on the ivory (for the +1H) and went worker->worker->settler.

For research I decided to take a risk with AH->BW since I wanted to settle my 2nd city near copper, depending on finding any either Archery or Fishing next (saw the fish 2S of the marble with my scout on turn 1).

Since this I deity I will only try to get the GLib and since the start is fairly food-poor focus on chopping up my workers/settlers after making the ressouces in my capital's BFC available.

Since I have a advantage in tactics over the AIs advantage in numbers/boni/research I will try to go for a domination victory.

Zara is great for expanding aggressively towards the AI due to getting his culture up very in newly found cities. Money will be a problem, but I have to try to leverage the land into growth.

I will try to go for a hybrid economy since I don't feel comfortable without cottages and will have to see what the terrain is like, but will try to focus on food.

The first settler was send right up to Darius borders in order to secure a western border with him and maybe even contest the 2 ressources of his city there.

Future cities are marked in the scrrenshot and depending on the AIs settling patterns I will try to spawn 3-4 cities during the first wave of expansion.



The run for city no2 in the south (the sweet ressouce spot) was a fairly close one since tons of barbs came at me and Darius had a settler there, too, but in the end I manage to settle right on the jungle hill with all 8 ressouces in the BFC (if I can push Darius' culture back that is. But I am fairly optimistic since he should be pushed from 2 sides.



By 1280 BC I have pushed Darius back from 3 ressouces and put down my 3rd blocking city in the north.



My research is down to 30% at the moment (just build 1 worker for each settler in my hurry to reach the 3 spots). So basically I have to consolidate for a bit and add some cottages to get my research up again and link my new cities.

The next wave will settle the spots along the flood-plains for a nice GP-city and likely the stone and marble spots.

CharonJr

 

[ABigCivFan]

Welcome CharouJr.

I am glad these threads are helping your game.

Yes, we have to Rex very carefully, there are a lot of thoughts going into where to settle next, but the most important factors are:

1. How likely is AIs beating you to that spot (speed)
2. What kind of resource will you claim, will these resource help immediately?
3. What purpose this city will serve to your empire.


with these things in mind, i prioritize on all the possible spots and come up with a settling sequence.

Spoiler :

In this particular game, I settle the jungle mega-resource city first to block MM, although could not settle on the ideal spot, but was close.

2nd I settled the flood plains and cottage spammed it ASAP to help with science. The earlier to brings those cottages on line the better. So my researching never dropped below 50% during REXing.

Next the banana/suger city to seal the southern border completely.

Next the Stone city to seal off Northern border.

Back filled eastern coast cities only when I could afford.

Can not read your screen shots, can you fix it?