[BNW] Community Deity Game #35 - Alexander

[consentient]

Please see the CDG Series Discussion Thread to express yourself if you have remarks and ideas.

Please be encouraged to share your experience playing this map, but please use the SPOILER tag if you attach a picture, make a comment about your neighbors, nearby natural wonders, locations of ancient ruins, terrain features, luxes, resources, etc.

There is a vanilla save; as well as a Lite save with a Worker and a Scout and a Hoplite instead of a Warrior.

Settings

Spoiler :

Hellblazers Map v5, Large Land Size, Handpicked Opponents, 2 extra CS

 

[Grendeldef]

At least one thing is sure from that pic - early workers will have enough tiles to work on without having to get mixed up anything trivial & boring like irrigation.

 

[consentient]

So far I have learned...

Spoiler :

that Darius decided to play a really sweet game, true to the historic rivalry between these two. By the Renaissance he had 36 cities, and now I've seen off the others, I have to figure out a way to get through his field of cities to reach his capital. I hope I don't have to use bombers

 

[beetle]

SIP as the starting plot is just much too rich!

Edit to mention other changes from default:

• Complete Kills
• Policy Saving
• Promotion Savings

 

[raider980]

Hellblazers maps sure likes sheep. I've been playing them recently and I'm always amazed at the amount of pastures I can build.

I think I'll move my guys towards the mountain and see what's there. I may decide to settle on that sheep. It will still allow the truffles to be in range.

 

[beetle]

Lost Athens on T71. I might have to stick with the lite version!

 

[Grendeldef]

SIP as the starting plot is just much too rich!

Edit to mention other changes from default:

• Complete Kills
• Policy Saving
• Promotion Savings

Me too - perhaps this will be a global campaign, too 2 but are those settings due to the map script or by Consentient? Not that it matters in this game as I'm as unlikely to use them from now on as while being unaware of those but for the future it'd be nice to know.

Spoiler T150 :

Tbh I'm not sure how I'm doing but things could be better or much worse.

Early DoW with Assyria and in total I think I stole 4 Workers & 3 Settlers from him which was a nice for endless special tiles but a heavy drain on gpt and moreover I spent a lot of turns in hammer deficit due to excessive number of units. Had I known the size of the landmass I would've settled more than 5 cities.
Full Liberty, left side of Honor & 2 in Rationalism - culture has been sparse. DoF with Theo while the others are at all keen on me; Dido came knocking but went away after a denouncement which was lucky as most of my units were hammering on Assur. After that I moved to Babylon but this seems to be taking ages since everyone but me has gazillion unit and only few less cities.

Missed religion as I the freakin' Prophet had better things to do than to appear to my infidels so my first city got religion on T135 after which I bought a Missionary, converted 2 more to buy Mosques as nothing better was available I really needed all the happiness.

 

[raider980]

Lost Athens on T71. I might have to stick with the lite version!

I lost Athens T65.

Spoiler Near AI revealed :

Was it Ashurbanipal? He's no nicer in the Lite version. Swarmed me with tons of swordsmen and CB. I saw him coming but he couldn't be bribed away for anything.

 

[penguin74]

OK, this is rough. Better players than me have already lost Athens, so I don't feel too bad but I don't see any way forward right now. Have been under siege about 20 turns.

Spoiler :

Assyria came at me with a swarm I can't hope to defeat but luckily he doesn't know how to war properly, so still has the towers in the front line, which can't get past hoplites.

Kind of a stalemate. 5 city liberty so far. No time to build more. If he ever puts the swords up front, I'm toast. We'll see.

 

[Grendeldef]

Spoiler T185 :

It took quite a while to plow through Babylon but he is down to one city finally. Sold 2 cities to Darius & Rammy so I'm back to positive gpt and even befriended with Egypt though it ma not last even the RA.
Gandhi took Order and I followed but Darius has Autocracy so he'll prolly attack soon. Luckily I managed to bribe him to attack India & Egypt so he may not be in the best of shape armywise though like others he is rolling in gpt and has a mountain of cash. Money, I think will go to CSs hopefully before the attack comes and later RLabs but I'm not even Modern yet.

The bad stuff. Gandhi is running away with sci as I seriously dropped of the pace with PSs so I have insufficient bpt and only 2 GSs at this point.

I assume there'll be seas of oil so I plan to hide for 30 odd turns and come back with GWBs and nuke India later but it'll be a long game.

 

[Grendeldef]

Especially for those who lost Athens...

Spoiler :

Was it Assyria every time? As I didn't have any problems with unless one counts the serious lack of units on my way so I couldn't even xp farm him and he even went Honor after Piety opening after I started the Worker recruitment.
Dido on the other hand has been The Military Chick from T0 luckily not giving too close views so far even though I only manage to pay to start a war with Theo around T90. She could've been highly problematic but occasionally selling everything, even with discount actually works upkeeping the fragile peace.

 

[Grendeldef]

Minor update up to T215.

Spoiler :

Dido surpringly took Order as well which was a lucky break and saves me for a while from making war in every direction. Darius is at war with everyone including me as I got bored with the peace, too bad he is into flight as well. Even worse news is the DoF between Egypt and India. I'm still friends with Egypt but Gandhi turned to hostile and is some 8 techs ahead of me but I did buy 5 RLabs right away so I'm at least temporarily catching up again. The downside is that he will have nukes before I can DoW so it'll be messy.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Wow!
You guys are still playing this game!
Nicely Done!

My only gripe is that Civ V is such a beautiful game with all the clouds.
Seems a shame that you have to play with the black instead

 

[consentient]

Sorry for not mentioning the other settings changes.

Policy and Promotion saving are no-brainers for me nowadays.

It just seems so odd to have to always be obsessed with weird mathematical calculations, that sometimes involve reducing your culture output, and stuff like that.

Promotion saving gives a more tactical edge. You invade a land, then discover a lot of rivers, and so train your troops in Amphibious crossings accordingly.

Complete Kills gives the AI a chance to scurry off with remaining settlers like the folk in Apocalypto after the raid, and helps with warmonger hate since you aren't wiping them out.

- - -

Back to the game, I didn't have the problems with the neighbour that y'all are having because I managed to capture one of his starting settlers with my Hoplite that went East. That nerfed him a lot.

Like I said, though. I REALLY wanted to post a quite detailed and interesting scenario map that sadly crashes to desktop in turns 2-5 because Firaxis are so rubbish. If anyone wants to help me fix that, we can give it another try in the next cycle?

 

[Grendeldef]

Nah, the changes in settings doesn't affect me directly in any way and I doubt AI benefits much of it either though I admit saving a promo for insta heals for meatshields could be handy. Policy saving is something I generally dislike as it removes one aspect of the game which to a degree at least requires planning ahead but, I don't really care whether it's enabled or not.

Spoiler Bulbing starts :

T235 and the war is going decently. Bulbed my way to satellites, used Kremlin policy for Spacelight Pioneers and the GE from that for Hubble and I'm only 4% behind Gandhi with 5 GSs to spare. Sci VC seems a viable option now but I think I'll enjoy nuking the rest of the world to smithereens much more. No shortage of oil and aluminium but uranium is still an unknown entity. India surely has some as I' ve bought it., hopefully all it but that doesn't really help that much unless he'll dump his 30k cash pile and 900 gpt somewhere else. Others than Gandhi are non-issues by now unless they all join forces which is unlikely given the amount of wars I've bought in recent years and half of CSs are my allies now. Sure, someone could buy them in one turn like India built WF if they so wished but that's not typical AI behaviour.

 

[Grendeldef]

Slight change of plans due to lack of time and/or laziness so I went for Sci instead of Dom on T261 with uneventful last ~20 turns.

Spoiler :

Hammering Persia was easy especially after I Oxforded Stealth. Razed or sold most his cities while keeping 3 not that I really needed the money nor did make any difference to AI economics but it always creates some tension between neighbours.
India build 3 parts but oddly teched Internet before Particle Physics or Nanotech so he wasn't that close of launching. Egypt seemed to have the numerically largest army and a turn before the end even GG bombed me under DoF which was cool - perhaps he needed that Uranium. Others dropped of the pace long before this and due to the flourishing world war nobody really cared what I did.

 

[beetle]

Lost Athens on T71.

I kind of deserved it, as I only had one Hoplite and one Archer and both were from ruins upgrades.
I reloaded to build a couple Hoplites after my 3rd Settler, but then I only kept Athens until T75.
Then I reloaded to build the two Hoplites after my 2nd Settler, and that bought me enough time to work out a bribes to keep the AIs off me until I got established.

But everything was slow, which I do not understand since land is so fertile. The far-away-run-away has been teching like crazy. It's T242, he has four SS parts, and just built SOH and Hubble. My usual MO would be to play it out, just to see exactly what turn he will launch, but I am just not that curious. I will reload back early and try Liberty, but I am not really optimistic about my chances.

Especially for those who lost Athens... Was it XXX every time?

Back to the game, I didn't have the problems with the neighbour that y'all are having because I managed to capture one of his starting settlers with my Hoplite that went East. That nerfed him a lot.

I got the Hoplite upgrade on T16, so that’s when I will reload back to. That is not early enough to catch his settler, but maybe I will be able to farm workers?

Seems a shame that you have to play with the black instead

I have the clouds, so I am not sure what settings cause the black instead. I agree that it is a pretty game.

 

[beetle]

I was able to farm workers, and had a much better Liberty game. I was behind all game, missed Porcelain Tower, and last to Ideologies. The three most distant AI just ran away in Science, a whole era ahead of me at the end. One of them launched on T278 while I was still building Apollo, and the other two had five parts each.

 

[penguin74]

Turn 289 defeat.

Spoiler :

Ghandi launched. Was my 3rd time through the map. Gave up the 1st time as I was just too far behind in techs. Never lost a city, but made no progress forward. Tried again but Dido swarmed me while I was busy with Assyria.

Gave up liberty, even though it seems the right call here and went generic Tradition. I was ahead of my best pace, and would have launched likely around turn 308 or so. Had all the techs, 1 part launched already 2 more 1 turn away so it was just a matter of building the last 3 parts. Egypt was already gone, Assyria and Babylon mostly dead. I had 4 of Assyria's cities, Persia had most of Babylon's and Egypt's. He was all over the map, huge culture, over 1200 GPT. Gandhi had the tech lead though and beat him by 1 part.

May try again, but not sure what I could do better this time to improve.

 

[beetle]

May try again, but not sure what I could do better this time to improve.

That is how I feel about this map. I hate to let the AI beat me: Even if I cannot get a DOM VC, I can almost always turtle to SV for a consolation prize. Not this time!