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

[Snaaty]

@ ifinnem:

Some saves are on the way, maybe you could post the 1500 AD save for me?

Thanks in advance,
Snaaty

 

[Rusten]

@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.

Don't think there will be a next try as I try to avoid reloading and restarting like the plague. It's all or nothing in this one and I will play it out to the end. I haven't given up as of yet because:

Spoiler :

A: Darius is the only one ahead of me in (worthwhile) techs afaik.
B: Darius just switched to free religion and thus Hannibal is bribable (they're even worst enemies at this point).
C: His borders are next to mine and Hannibal's, likely to fall to a military flanking as he is not a military builder.

My best option at this point (800 AD) would probably be planning on wiping out an already weakened MM together with Han (with rifles) to increase our strenght and then move onto Darius together later. Han already took a big city from MM in a previous short war, it shouldn't be hard to get him re-engaged. My game and tech has been pretty good despite losing Liberalism, it's just that Darius pulled something extra-ordinary out of his ass. I only need to bring him down sacrificing whatever and the game will be much easier. I was ETA'ing Lib for ~500 AD afterall!

Edit: @Snaaty, the offer from me still stands for uploading a couple of saves. Just e-mail me again and I'll upload them.

 

[ifinnem]

@ ifinnem:

Some saves are on the way, maybe you could post the 1500 AD save for me?

Thanks in advance,
Snaaty

No worries happy to do it

 

[CharonJr]

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?

Hi,

yup, I think along those lines about city placement, too

Spoiler :

Capital - Production

City 1 - Block Darius to the west, "steal" rice and cow from Darius and generate some cash via cottages on floodplains (able to share some of those cottages with city 4/5 - my planed GP/science farm). Fairly large danger of Darius heading this way => prio 1, not much protection needed (from barbs at lest) due to proximity to Darius borders.

City 2 - Block Mansa/Hannibal in the south and claim those sweet 8 ressouces, potential GP farm after ironworking/calendar. Large danger of Mansa heading there => prio 2, no time to build another worker before building the settler to claim it, medium protection needed due to bards coming in from the south.

City 3 - Block Darius in the north, claim fish and 2nd cow. Since it can only have one farm till CS it will be cottage spamed at first in order to generate money, might be farmed over later. Darius might head there fairly soon since I have no idea how much he is able to expand into the south => prio 3 (again no or just one worker before getting the settler for it).

My economy is/was in pretty poor shape at the point.

City 4/5 - Finish block in the north or south (depending were I see the AI heading first). North will claim stone (doubt I will get any wonders with it, but maybe get some money). South will become my GP/science farm, likely some cottages for money at the start. Hard to tell if the AIs will go for this spot fast since it is between 2 of my cities. Will rush a settler if I see any AI heading this way => prio 4.

Next the city that hasn't been build as no4 will come in either to claim stone or to build the GP farm.

The other cities will be filled in when my economy allows it.

City 6 - Claim marble (capital will get it anyway with next culture pop), claim 2nd fish (trading) and share cow with no2, generate some trade, production/money from cottages.

City 7 - Claim sheep (might switch prio to 6 if health becomes a problem), farm and cottages, generate trade.

City 8 - Claim fish, production, trade.

Overall fairly similar to what you did, but with a higher emphasis on blocking and willingness to run my economy into the ground

CharonJr

 

[Snaaty]

nice work snaaty, some very nice work

@Futurehermit:

Someone said some time ago that I cant rush the AI with cavalry anymore in BtS... ...so I had to come up with something else, you know... ...and btw. rushing´s cool, because land is power, never forget that

...

@ Rusten:

Just sent you some more saves, feel free to post some

...

@ CharonJr:

Economy doens´t matter really, as long as you have some cottages growing, can hire some scientists, and your army doesn´t go on strike, you are fine. Gabbing as much land as possible is must be prio 1

 

[Rusten]

Some more saves of Snaaty's game attached.

(Copied from mail):
1. 680 AD: cant remember what was then, but might be interresting
2. 1130 AD: invading Hannibal
3. 1300 AD: invading Mansa
4. 1380 AD: final push on Mansa

 

[ABigCivFan]

The fun has started!

Spoiler :

Late 1500ADs, Cathy DOWed on me while pleased, she had massive invasion force backed by a huge navy which I could not contend with, made multiple drops along my coastal cities.

Lucky I had hooked up all cities with rail, and was building a force myself to invade MM. So I could delt with her landings with my mobile forces.

In the mean time, Hannibal resumed his Ancient conflict with the MM/Darius faction and fighting a 2 front war, I promptly gave him techs leading to Industrialism and let him take on the brunt of their initial stacks. It turned Hannibal friendly, I might need him to deal with the Cathy/JC threat later...

Ceaser and his 2 puppets (KK and Ragnar) had been eyeing our continent and decided to get in the mix, dropped ginomous landing forces on MM and managed to capture one of his coastal cities. Interesting MM had so many SAMs running around doing both defending and attacking! It was wildly entertaining. No one even had an airforce at the time

I got my first combat GG from fending off Russians, promptly built MA in Capital (the 2nd Military prod city).

Switching to Police State/Nationhood/Theocracy for all out war!

 

[Snaaty]

@ ABigCivFan:

wow, sound impressive (and interesting)... ...welcome in the world of war

...

Latest news from Zara berserk... ...Rebuilding and politics:

Spoiler :

After our conti is secure now, it is time to look ahead:

Therefore the plan now is to found the Suhi corporation and therefore Zara revolted back into Pacifism and Caste (and UU + Free Speech). Because we had a GE already, we researched Railroad after Democracy, then Medicine, and now on to Assembly Line, to get our production online.

To end the oversea trade, we switched to Merc and now it’s time to force our vassals to do so also. Techtrades are a no go now, we will leave the AI´s to their own research (we don’t need them from now on, and all techtrades on deity favour the AI greatly). The Mercantilism block on our conti will cripple the other conti economically, because the all hate each other (Julius has done a good job in pissing of everybody, but has taken lots of cities from the others) and don’t trade much there. Mining Inc was founded in our Shrine (and soon Wallstreet) city, and the GS we generated in our capital (who should have been a GM for Suhi with odds of 81% to be a GM) is on the way to get there to found an academy.

View attachment 168633


Luckily we have a second GM in progress (we started to generate one in two cities, just to make sure), who will be a GM with odds of 89% within two turns, then we will do our last revolt and switch to Emancipation and Free Religion.

View attachment 168634


As soon as Suhi hits home, we will be fine, with food also (Mining gives 20 hammers in each city) and therefore we are already mining over all windmills and soon will cottage over all farms left (except those needed for irrigation chains).

I still haven’t decided about the victory conditions, maybe Zara berserk will try an invasion later on, but for now we will tech a little peaceful. We produce about 1500 beakers per turn, while still generation 40 gold at 80% research each turn. We are also the world leader now in production, gold, food, import/export and population so we are fine now with our new isolation politics…

And just to be sure, we spread our army along our costal cities, 4-5 up to date units in each of them

EDIT:

@ Rusten:

I mailed you the latest save, feel free to post it (I will just go on bothering you with my saves, untill you tell me to stop)

 

[CharonJr]

Hmm, I keep losing the GLib to Mansa who reseaches Aesthetics and Literature himself. Looks like I officially lost that one and will retry/change my strategy till I am able to come up with a way to do this.

The main problem is that Darius keeps culture-flipping the 4th forest I need for the GLib.

Hmm, maybe I should delay joining the Hindu club till after having build the GLib (no turn of anarchy), but then I would lose the relation boni I could have generated in the time...

Oh well, will see how this one works out.

Otherwise it might be interesting to see how this one would work out without the GLib.

At least there seems to be no competition for the Parthenon.

CharonJr

 

[Rusten]

@ Rusten:

I mailed you the latest save, feel free to post it (I will just go on bothering you with my saves, untill you tell me to stop)

No problem

Will upload the next ones in this post too as/if they come, so check back. Max of 4 per post so the other is stacked already.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Some very intense developments in this update...

1160AD-1760AD:

Spoiler :

1160 Growing 2 GMs in 2 cities during GA. not the best GP farm but it has GL/NE combo. Sacrifice 7 turns of production to get a GM is well worth it.
I saved one GM for Sushi later.




1260AD: Is that a joke? Rome poped 2 GP (1 GS, 1 GE) on the same turn!!!???




1350AD: Culture pushing, gained enough lands to the West and South to settle 2 new cities.




1530AD: Darius loves horse!! I did not need the horse, rice and fish feeds Sushi Inc. 2 more food to every city with this trade.




1560AD: WWI. It all started with Cathy BS me while pleased, and Hannibal decided to end the Ancient comflict with the Financial club once and for all. JC and company was eyeing those Mali wonders and dogpiled MM.

I was actually preparing my own offensive against MM, but this will be delayed since i dont know how Strong Cathy's invasion will be. As Fas as i know, she is not the phony type, she will back up her words with swords!
I had swithed to Police State/Theocracy right after Industrialism for full war-time production. Producing Tanks and Artillaries @ 2:1 ratio. And some spies.



1615AD:

Cathy landed a few times no my Eastern seaboard, mostly 4 Infantry+4 Cossacks, easy to deal with. I trained my tanks on her troops and gained some CR3 tanks.

MM's border city Walata is engolfed by my culture, easy prey. Note he did have a large garrison troops. Though no match for CR2 Artis and tanks.




1615AD: Captured Walata, but will withdraw from the city and allow MM to take it back. I only have strong City ATTACK force at the point, not strong City Garrison troops. If he moves his troop into the city next turn, can turn it into a kill zone.... But he did not take the bait, so we left it empty for the next turn.



1635AD: Meanwhile, Cathy stepped up her effort, sending huge navies and more transports over, I only had 2 battleships, hiding in cities and doing opportune kill only.

My garrison is weak, and she captured Matara by amphibious assualt, though i did not see any her troops had Amphibious promotion, she did attacked from the boat???!!

I have say I am very impressed by her strong inter-continental invasion, she did it better than anything I have seen before from an AI.



1635AD: I have a empire-wide railroad network, allowing me to put newly produced troops right into action. My artys and tanks went on to Liberate Matara. Lost some buildings but killed some Russian troops.



1655AD: MM is going for a cultural win at an alarming rate, i have to stop him!
The plan is capture these cities.




1655AD: Look what MM got in Djenne, a super Arty Division! I was really scared of this SOD, If he suiside these 20 Arties against my invasion troops, he can easily mop up and kill my entire invasion force with his mobil reinforcements. I decided to flank his Southern cities with weaker defenses. And wait until bomber on line to tangle ith Djenne.



1675AD: Battle for Gao. It is a hill city, had to bring more Arties.



1680AD: Spoil from GAO!!

Broadway/Rock N Roll/Hollywood gave me 15 new tradable resources with this victory, I later dominated the global resource trading scene! Thanks a lot Mensa!




1680AD: Renegotiated all trade deals which netted more more than 7 resources from the other AIs.



1685AD: Cathy came with 4 transports this time, expecting 16 troops, probably Infantry and tanks. This game me 1 turn to prepare for the on-slaught, called back some tanks back from Southern front to save my cities.



1690AD: I love putting Cathy in my games this is why:



She is cute and relentless. Coming with better stuff each time!

1690AD:

My poor Battleships are in hiding but never waste an opportunity to kill a Russian transport.




1695AD: Defeating Cathy landing party. Lost 2 Arties and 1 tank. Killed 16.




1710AD: My invasion force at the gate of the UN city. This is what i called a "Nut-Cracker" task force with highly promoted CR3 tanks, if the garrison force is small, I dont even need to attack with Arty first, just bomb down the defense and let the CR3 tanks kill them. But if the garrison force is large, will need to run suicide arty first to soften them, and often the CR3 tanks can then kill 2 defenders on the same turn.




1725AD: Captured Cristor Rendentor in a Tundra city, now I am Spiritual!

1730AD: What is that, Destroyers on a plain tile? is it because of the fort?

 

[ABigCivFan]

1745-1755AD: Battle for Timbuktu

Spoiler :

1745AD: Trade screen.



1750AD: I had 4 production cities with Mil Academies pumping out troops, did not have a huge army size, but always enough to take the next city.

Battle for Timbuktu. I have an awsome "Nut Cracker" battle group, but Mensa's garrison actually outnumbers my forces.



1755AD: Attack plan, since I have fewer troops, will need every tank to kill 2 weakened defenders in order to take the city in 1 turn. This means I have to sacrifice large numbers of Artillaries. That is ok, since bombers already online.

More over, the CR2 artillaries are easy to replace, but CR3 tanks are not.

Here is the attack sequence presented on 2 scree shots.

The tank attacks between the Artillary barrages and 2 of my best "Nut cracker" tanks with CR3+Barrage promos taking out 2 tough Marine defenders.




After Artillary barrage, things become easy.



After all this hard work, i present you the prize city.




Although we have enjoyed some Military success, there are still a lot of uncertainty.

Cathy has Mining Inc, and is pushing for SPace, she already got some parts built. Not sure about the culture sitiation with JC/Cathy, but could be scary. I now have the UN, Hannibal voted for me since he is friendly, but the others wont. I will need to swith to Free Religions soon. Also need to finish with MM, vassle him after Djenne (the last strong hold), and swith back to Representation, Free Speech and get research out of the hole.

at this point, Diplomatic, Cutural, Space are all possible, but I Cathy might just beat me to space since she had a head start. All i can do now is crack up EP against her, and start sabo her parts...

 

[Snaaty]

@ ABigCivFan:

Now it´s your turn to swing the hammer it seems

Sad that Caesar dominated his conti from the beginning (apparently did a nice preat rush on Mongolia/Russia) and Cathy couldnt show her skills in my game...

...

I played also up to 17something, this time peacemonger, so not much interesting stuff to report:

Spoiler :

Not much happened for the next 200 years, we founded Sid´s Suhi besides the Mining Inc and have put the HQ also in our Wallstreet and Shrine city, having this city generate alone 745 gold per turn now.

View attachment 168696


We also spammed Mining and Suhi to all our cities (or are still busy spamming it), and our cities now are all food and production powerhouses. Most farms got cottaged over and all hills got mined. Suhi brought 9 food extra, Mining 20 hammers.


Our empire in full bloom:

View attachment 168697


We have about 5 times the production of our closest rival (Caesar) and about 10 times the production of the average AI, so we can really lean back now. A solid techlead is also established, and without oversee trade, the AI´s really are no match for us, and so we managed to build (almost) all modern wonders.

We had to drop research from 80% to 60% due to corporation upkeep, but thanks to the massive amount of cottages and specialists they allow to run us, we are still doing very well in science, approaching the 2000 beakers/turns mark. We had a little bad luck in GP´s, and only generated GA´s, so we haven’t the requiremets for running a second Golden Age, but at least we could culturebomb Timbuktu two or three times because it kept revolting…

@ Rusten:

New save´s on the way

 

[ABigCivFan]

1760AD - The Ending...

Spoiler :

1775AD:

Air Barrage Djenne before tanks move in.




1775AD: Djenne fell, it has Eff Tower and 4 mil instructors.




1775AD: Vassled MM and traded for all his resources. Cathy foolishly spread Mining Inc to my cities and now i am taking advantage.




1785AD: Now MM the culture monger is gone, I need to focus on either culture or space, but Cathy and JC already built some parts, dont think i could catch up so mostly pushing for Culture.

MM's cities have other religions i did not have (Christian, Muslim) so I quickly swithed to Organized Religion and start spamming Chrit/Muslim Missionaries/Temples, and build those Cathedrals in the 3 cuture cities. I tried to time the 3 cities to reach legendary around the same time.

Also slow down research, i was pulling 1100+ beakers with 0% science, just need enough beakers to get to Modern Armor for defensive.




1816AD: Used 2 GP on a GA, used a GArtist to drop 4000 into Gondar.




1822AD: The 3rd cultural city. commerce cities are great for this purpose when have high cultural slider rates.




1824AD: JC and company unleashed on Hannibal/Darius, JC landed everywhere around our conti, North, East, South, causing a lot of trouble for Hannibal. But with our conti on open border and railroad, Hannibal was able to easily repel all JC's efforts.




1824AD:

I shipped some spies to Russian just in case need to Sabo her spaceship parts. It turns out having a state religion reduce the Sabo mission cost by 40%!!! But the chance of success is on 42%. Very risky business.




1834AD:

Cathy is just 1 part away from launch...




1842AD: Cathy launched!!!!! I did not have a single part completed....



So what happened?????

Spoiler :

1850AD:

My main land.



1852AD:




1852AD:

Statistics.




1852AD:

Score.




I am very proud as this is my first cultural victory of CIV4...

What a blast.

That was another very satisfying game, thanks guys for shareing your experience.

 

[r_rolo1]

@ABigCivFan

Magnificent game as usual And a nice suspense moment in the end as well ( 2/3 turns later Cathy would win by space, wasn't it? )

 

[ABigCivFan]

Thanks r_rolo1.

Yes, Cathy was 4 turns away from Alpha Centuria. I had 15000 EPs on her, but I did not Sabo her parts and let her launch, just my way of thanking her for making it yet another fun game. Then 1852AD was in her face

I delayed Computer to not obsolete those 3 wonders, but forgot it is required for building Modern Armor should have been more careful next time, I was thinking everyone would DOW on me so i need a huge defensive force at the end, but good that JC got busy with Hannibal, and I had MM on my side.

I learned a lot about playing a cultural game which i never done before. But since I have done enough peace and warmongering in the game, it was a good way to try it. Beating Cathy to space is normally very hard, she is very good at getting the required techs and having solid Manuf. capacity for that everytime.

A spiritual+Creative leader is probably the best choice for a cultural win. I will try one day...

 

[Snaaty]

@ ABigCivFan:

Congrats on your win

...

I also ended my game yesterday, but not very spectacular though...

Spoiler :

Went for Space, since I´m trying a Domination victory with the game I´m placing in Stories and Tales... ...arrived at Alpha C at 1854 AD, with science at 5000 beakers/turn and future tech 3 almost done, the best AI just finished Apollo some turns ago…

Only thing a little interesting was JC, who eliminated Mongolia and vassalized Russia despite me giving about 10 techs to Cathy, but apparently modern armours didn’t save her. Later JC tried do DOW on me, but 90% of his army got sunk before ever arriving near our shores thanks to our missile cruisers and what landed wasn’t impressive, some artillery and infantry (only 5 transports altogether made it to my shores before I launched, and I was about to win the naval battle at that point, blocking already 50% of his costal cities with my missile cruisers). I made short work with my modern armours and mech.inf. out of what landed anyways…

But a little funny was this:

Spoiler :

View attachment 168737

We and JC are brothers in spirit!!!

 

[CellKu]

ABigCivFan, thanks for hosting such an interesting game! And congratulations to you and the others for your wins.

Your reports got me excited to get into it as well. Thus, I played until 1 AD (btw, has any of you a save from 1AD? - I am interested to see where you were then). Here is a brief glimpse on my empire and the save.
Would be grateful for some remarks on what I could improve/focus on during the next turns.

Spoiler :

I settled the first city on the marble, rushed the second city to the super-spot and the third to block Darius. Due to Darius speed of expansion I had to rush out the other cities as well. I think I chopped like mad. I was able to get the GLib (n Lalibela) and am now planing to build up my first science city there - also built an academy in Lalibela with my first GS. Capital will probably become a production center.

I am now aiming at getting Lib.

Here is the screenshot:

And the file

 

[tycoonist]

nice win ABCF. once again your thread had proved itself to be very educational. thanks guys!

 

[ABigCivFan]

@Snaaty:

Talk about Zara the Dominator! Next time we need to put Catherine on your continent and as your neighbour


@Cellku

Here is my 1AD save, was 1 turn from Paper, 5 turns from a GS for bulbing Education. In the middle of pushing for liberalism.


@Tycoonist

Give this a try if you want, we have lots of games/strategies to compare with now.