Tacgnol
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2008
- Messages
- 216
What's up fam, so I've been playing Civ since elementary school, I started playing Civ 3 in like fourth or fifth grade, I was a total noob of course. I played a ton of Civ IV as well, both vanilla and BTS, probably the 2nd most I've played out of any game outside of my severe WoW addiction that consumed most of my high school social life. I played some Civ V and have really gotten back into it with VI, having no job helps. Anyway, all this time I've never been able to play on Deity, I've always kind of looked up to it as a legendary achievement for nerds with no life that was far beyond me.
Well, I've finally done it, I won a game on Deity, a cultural victory as Mvemba n Nzinga, man I don't know if I even spelled that right. I won on Deity before, Domination on an Island Plates map as Spain but that was exploiting the broken AI combat mechanics a couple patches ago and I cheated, Brazil won a Space Race victory as I was rolling through their country, I had to load the autosave from a couple turns earlier and send an armor to pillage their spaceport. This time was fair and square, I reloaded a couple autosaves to fix mistakes just because oh my god barbarians are SO #@&!ING ANNOYING late game when they run around your units and city to pillage your resorts and museums but nothing that really changed the course of the game. And I did it peacefully, too, without declaring war or taking a single city.
I started expanding south and west, built a Settler second after my first Slinger, was planning on rushing Aachen but Barbarossa offered friendship so I accepted. I got a free Scout from a goodie hut, luckiest thing I could have possibly gotten. Then Teddy founded New York right where I was planning on settling, but I'd already started building more settlers and scouted out the region I was in so I settled Mbanza Mbata and Kinchassa. I pretty much neglected building districts to spam settlers early on, just building a couple Campuses in Kwila and Mbanza Nsundi for the adjacency bonus, one in the capital later as well. Mbamba in the wast was farther than I even planned to expand, my Scout stumbled upon an undefended barbarian settler so I snatched it and moved it back into position.
Once I staked out the borders of my region I started building Theater Squares everywhere, getting them up was first priority then amphitheaters and I finally had enough breathing room for some Builders and CHs, I think Mbanzas too around this point. I rushed Machinery to get Crossbows as a deterrant, my entire army was 2 Ngao Mbebas and 3 Archers. The Mbebas were great at killing barbarians, didn't use them in a war but the forest movement is super useful at hunting them down. I also wanted Printing, I had like 6 GWW by then and got to like 100+ Tourism.
While I was getting ready to finish settling my eastern coast Spain sent a settler up with a few units. They built Barcelona right in my way, where I was planning on building 2 cities, I settled Mbwila in the north instead. To the north is just 3 CSes and tundra. Spain was very far behind technologically all game, I don't think they made it out of the industrial era, they only had Madrid and Barcelona, I could have so easily taken it and filled in my borders and in any other game I would but they offered friendship not long after so I accepted and committed to peace.
Once I got my theaters up the GP just started flowing in. More Writers, Artists and Musicians than I knew what to do with. My Palace filled up with a relic and 4 GWMs, and I had one Musician and later 2 more sitting around waiting for Broadcast Centers to hold all their works. Likewise with the Artists, I had to build Art Museums in 3 of my cities just to hold all their great works, later on I had to build another Art Museum and I also had the Hermitage. The Great Writers were great though, I filled up all but my last couple amphitheaters and replaced a couple GWWs that got heisted from my capital before I had any spies.
Overall I would have to say Kongo's UA is just insanely, ridiculously overpowered and needs to be nerfed, they are a strong civilization even just with Mbanzas and Ngao Mbebas and the religious thing. The one thing I will say though is it was somewhat of a tradeoff, because I had so many Artists I built more Art Museums instead of Archaeological Museums and even though I filled them faster and without spending 1500 gold or like 40 turns on Archaeologists, I missed out on a ton of Tourism from theming. The worst part is, I had 3 different Artists that had Landscapes by the end of the game, I just kept adding new works within 10 turns of each other as I built more museums and got more artists so I was never able to move them around. You can't move Art for 10 turns but you can move Artifacts immediately? Just pointless inconvenience. And all but one Artifact was Ancient so theming was almost automatic.
Around turn 200 I started building Big Ben in Mbanza Kongo and saving up gold. Most of my cities were busy with Archaeologists, Museums and keeping up with Mbanzas. By this point I'd met everyone and was friends with Persia, Germany, America, China and Spain. Alex, Harald and Hojo kept denouncing me and Gilgamesh was just mildly unfriendly. A little bit later Japan DOWed me and invaded Mbamba. I guess it was lucky that I was saving for Big Ben but it was really annoying. I upgraded my troops, moved my Mbebas (now Muskets) over, bought a Frigate and Crossbowman and started defending. I managed to kill off all their troops and fight off their invasion and win their horses and gold, it was all they had the poor guys. But not without them pillaging the Theater and Mbanza in Mbamba and the Campus in Kwila. Fortunately I'd foreseen this happening and didn't have any great works in Mbamba, even if a competent AI could have taken the city they crippled the part that was useful for victory, production in both cities was so low it took almost to the end to finish repairing the damage.
Around turn 250 the GP ran out and I finally was able to focus on actually building up my country. I think I got all but 2 or 3 GWAM from the Industrial Era on. Prior to this I'd built very few Builders, Kongo was a center of great culture with advanced universities in its cities but the countryside was wild and undeveloped. I built up around my core cities but the later game border ones were mostly just Resorts with Theaters. I also built a colony on an island, it was forested and all the coastal tiles were Breathtaking, I had like 5 Resorts on it. After researching Computers I beelined for the Eiffel Tower, I'd messed around and gotten Printing and Economics first for the wonders but somehow still managed to get it, I also picked up Hermitage and Bolshoi Theater in my other cities.
From there it was pretty much just dig in and wait for the tourists to come. I built as many Resorts as I could. It took a while to deal with the backlog of Musicians I had, eventually I was able to use them all and get the 4 GWMs from my Palace into Broadcast Centers, I built Mont St Michel and filled the last few slots with Relics. Around turn 300 Sumeria and Norway DOWed me, but I'd just allied and signed a defensive pact with Cyrus so it turned into Sumeria and Persia tearing each other apart, I never saw a single Norwegian unit. On the plus side Alex finally respected me for getting declared war on and stopped denouncing me, Hojo eventually came around and made friends and I signed peace with Gilgamesh who only seemed to mildly dislike me. I also accidentally denounced Germany instead of declaring friends, lol, was so close to winning I didn't bother to reload.
I finally cruised to victory on turn 321, 1900 AD. A bit later than usual, the last couple cultural games I've played AIs won around turn 300-315, I messed around before researching Computers which slowed me down, the AIs did a good job keeping each other in check, when I went to pillage China's spaceports I found someone else had already done so. Overall, it was a fun game, challenging but not too hard, all the diplomacy I did paid off, shoutout to Victoria for basically telling me how not to suck at culture.
TL;DR: Turn 321 Deity CV win as Kongo on a Large map, peaceful game without taking a single city or declaring war, Kongo is ridiculously strong, Great Artists suck, you can't please everyone but you can have plenty of friends once you get the hang of diplomacy, AIs know how to sabotage spaceports and steal your art, somehow got crazy lucky and got 6 wonders, I win at Civ!
Well, I've finally done it, I won a game on Deity, a cultural victory as Mvemba n Nzinga, man I don't know if I even spelled that right. I won on Deity before, Domination on an Island Plates map as Spain but that was exploiting the broken AI combat mechanics a couple patches ago and I cheated, Brazil won a Space Race victory as I was rolling through their country, I had to load the autosave from a couple turns earlier and send an armor to pillage their spaceport. This time was fair and square, I reloaded a couple autosaves to fix mistakes just because oh my god barbarians are SO #@&!ING ANNOYING late game when they run around your units and city to pillage your resorts and museums but nothing that really changed the course of the game. And I did it peacefully, too, without declaring war or taking a single city.
Spoiler :
I started expanding south and west, built a Settler second after my first Slinger, was planning on rushing Aachen but Barbarossa offered friendship so I accepted. I got a free Scout from a goodie hut, luckiest thing I could have possibly gotten. Then Teddy founded New York right where I was planning on settling, but I'd already started building more settlers and scouted out the region I was in so I settled Mbanza Mbata and Kinchassa. I pretty much neglected building districts to spam settlers early on, just building a couple Campuses in Kwila and Mbanza Nsundi for the adjacency bonus, one in the capital later as well. Mbamba in the wast was farther than I even planned to expand, my Scout stumbled upon an undefended barbarian settler so I snatched it and moved it back into position.
Once I staked out the borders of my region I started building Theater Squares everywhere, getting them up was first priority then amphitheaters and I finally had enough breathing room for some Builders and CHs, I think Mbanzas too around this point. I rushed Machinery to get Crossbows as a deterrant, my entire army was 2 Ngao Mbebas and 3 Archers. The Mbebas were great at killing barbarians, didn't use them in a war but the forest movement is super useful at hunting them down. I also wanted Printing, I had like 6 GWW by then and got to like 100+ Tourism.
While I was getting ready to finish settling my eastern coast Spain sent a settler up with a few units. They built Barcelona right in my way, where I was planning on building 2 cities, I settled Mbwila in the north instead. To the north is just 3 CSes and tundra. Spain was very far behind technologically all game, I don't think they made it out of the industrial era, they only had Madrid and Barcelona, I could have so easily taken it and filled in my borders and in any other game I would but they offered friendship not long after so I accepted and committed to peace.
Once I got my theaters up the GP just started flowing in. More Writers, Artists and Musicians than I knew what to do with. My Palace filled up with a relic and 4 GWMs, and I had one Musician and later 2 more sitting around waiting for Broadcast Centers to hold all their works. Likewise with the Artists, I had to build Art Museums in 3 of my cities just to hold all their great works, later on I had to build another Art Museum and I also had the Hermitage. The Great Writers were great though, I filled up all but my last couple amphitheaters and replaced a couple GWWs that got heisted from my capital before I had any spies.
Overall I would have to say Kongo's UA is just insanely, ridiculously overpowered and needs to be nerfed, they are a strong civilization even just with Mbanzas and Ngao Mbebas and the religious thing. The one thing I will say though is it was somewhat of a tradeoff, because I had so many Artists I built more Art Museums instead of Archaeological Museums and even though I filled them faster and without spending 1500 gold or like 40 turns on Archaeologists, I missed out on a ton of Tourism from theming. The worst part is, I had 3 different Artists that had Landscapes by the end of the game, I just kept adding new works within 10 turns of each other as I built more museums and got more artists so I was never able to move them around. You can't move Art for 10 turns but you can move Artifacts immediately? Just pointless inconvenience. And all but one Artifact was Ancient so theming was almost automatic.
Around turn 200 I started building Big Ben in Mbanza Kongo and saving up gold. Most of my cities were busy with Archaeologists, Museums and keeping up with Mbanzas. By this point I'd met everyone and was friends with Persia, Germany, America, China and Spain. Alex, Harald and Hojo kept denouncing me and Gilgamesh was just mildly unfriendly. A little bit later Japan DOWed me and invaded Mbamba. I guess it was lucky that I was saving for Big Ben but it was really annoying. I upgraded my troops, moved my Mbebas (now Muskets) over, bought a Frigate and Crossbowman and started defending. I managed to kill off all their troops and fight off their invasion and win their horses and gold, it was all they had the poor guys. But not without them pillaging the Theater and Mbanza in Mbamba and the Campus in Kwila. Fortunately I'd foreseen this happening and didn't have any great works in Mbamba, even if a competent AI could have taken the city they crippled the part that was useful for victory, production in both cities was so low it took almost to the end to finish repairing the damage.
Around turn 250 the GP ran out and I finally was able to focus on actually building up my country. I think I got all but 2 or 3 GWAM from the Industrial Era on. Prior to this I'd built very few Builders, Kongo was a center of great culture with advanced universities in its cities but the countryside was wild and undeveloped. I built up around my core cities but the later game border ones were mostly just Resorts with Theaters. I also built a colony on an island, it was forested and all the coastal tiles were Breathtaking, I had like 5 Resorts on it. After researching Computers I beelined for the Eiffel Tower, I'd messed around and gotten Printing and Economics first for the wonders but somehow still managed to get it, I also picked up Hermitage and Bolshoi Theater in my other cities.
From there it was pretty much just dig in and wait for the tourists to come. I built as many Resorts as I could. It took a while to deal with the backlog of Musicians I had, eventually I was able to use them all and get the 4 GWMs from my Palace into Broadcast Centers, I built Mont St Michel and filled the last few slots with Relics. Around turn 300 Sumeria and Norway DOWed me, but I'd just allied and signed a defensive pact with Cyrus so it turned into Sumeria and Persia tearing each other apart, I never saw a single Norwegian unit. On the plus side Alex finally respected me for getting declared war on and stopped denouncing me, Hojo eventually came around and made friends and I signed peace with Gilgamesh who only seemed to mildly dislike me. I also accidentally denounced Germany instead of declaring friends, lol, was so close to winning I didn't bother to reload.
I finally cruised to victory on turn 321, 1900 AD. A bit later than usual, the last couple cultural games I've played AIs won around turn 300-315, I messed around before researching Computers which slowed me down, the AIs did a good job keeping each other in check, when I went to pillage China's spaceports I found someone else had already done so. Overall, it was a fun game, challenging but not too hard, all the diplomacy I did paid off, shoutout to Victoria for basically telling me how not to suck at culture.
TL;DR: Turn 321 Deity CV win as Kongo on a Large map, peaceful game without taking a single city or declaring war, Kongo is ridiculously strong, Great Artists suck, you can't please everyone but you can have plenty of friends once you get the hang of diplomacy, AIs know how to sabotage spaceports and steal your art, somehow got crazy lucky and got 6 wonders, I win at Civ!
