The Immortal Alphabet Game #15 - India

It starts scaling up after you hit pop 6. Regular unhappiness: 4+6 = 10, India's UA: 7+3 = 10. (for some reason it drops by 7 and not 8)
You get 3 global and 1 local unhappiness when you found normally. So at 6 pop it's 3+6 for any civ and 6+3 for India.
 
T306 DiploV, 67 points
Spoiler :
Achievements
Spoiler :
A: 11 points (116 million pop)
B: 2 (26 cities with Hinduism)
C: 6 (550 wonder points + Taj)
D: 23 (227 total happiness)
E: 0 - too dang slow
F: 3 (2591 final score)
G: 7 (7 prophets bought one from HS, one from finishing piety)
H: 3 (6 green modifiers with Germany; Zulu were eliminated)
I: 3 (passed ideology and religion)
J: 9 (680 cpt + 186 fpt)

Total: 66

I settled the desert hill one tile west of the start, opened tradition then went liberty. My initial plan was to war elephant rush the continent, but with a start that good, I just couldn't resist the temptation of early wonders. I built ToA, HG, Petra, barely missed pyramids, built oracle... it was a good start. Later I narrowly missed getting ND, MP, and FP. Even with those misses, it was a good game.

Since I didn't rush Shaka, of course I bribed him to attack Germany as soon as I saw his troops near my borders. Only took 2 iron to bribe him to war- love that guy. Later, shortly after I got xbows, he was 3 turns into peace with Bismark when he attacked me. That was one of the best rushes I've ever seen an AI do on immortal- non stop impis. I did lose one city, but not to Shaka. I lost it to Jerusalem, his cs ally! I had a little city away from the rest of mine, with no troops in it, and the city bombard could not stop the might Jerusalem attack of 2 xbows and a pike. Oh well. After killing what seemed like dozens of impis, he finally agreed to peace. We stayed at peace until I got arillery and FLs, when I got my payback.

Once shaka was dealt with, it was smooth sailing. I had great gpt, though I'm not sure exactly how. Because I had so much faith, I decided to go piety to get To the Glory of God. That came in handy. And I didn't feel like it was a waste of policies as I had so much culture. I completed Liberty, Piety, Commerce, got Aristocracy in Trad, up to Cultural Diplomacy in Patronage. I never took a level 3 tenet in freedom, as i had so much gold I didn't need it. I just took the happiness policies in freedom.

I also have no idea how Vadalaz got 90 million more pop than I did, in 20 fewer turns. That is impressive. Before this game I had never broken 100 in happiness. 100 seemed impossible. So I'm pretty happy I got it up to 227.

Thanks for the fun map!

Screenshots
Spoiler :



 
t308 DV, 42 points

Spoiler :
169 happiness, LOL. My early choices/mistakes really slowed everything down. Having 2 basically worthless religious beliefs instead of food or a second faith building, sigh. I also think Petra and my initial settle spot made for slow growth and science. Went Machinery before Education, I think.

I focused quite a lot on production to maximize Petra (not much irrigable desert). I also had to run TR Caravans way more than usual in a Tradition game, money was so short at times. Plus constant food Caravans to Mumbai and all newer cities forever, instead of Delhi. I never did run all specialists in Delhi with Freedom (not sure if Petra tiles are better than Freedom SoL specialists). Not having any decent coastal cities until late game hurt as well.

I settled expos very late - 3rd city not until t83, 4th on S coast like 160s, and 5th at Mt Fuji not until t202! Just a horrible early game.

Plus Neb had a mtn cap, the GW, and Mt Kill'em'n'AllYo, :hammer::rockon:, so he just dominated his continent.

Shaka took out Germany so easily, I took his city NW of my Fuji city with Canons or Arty, then rolled him up E, keeping Hamburg and Berlin, then resurrecting Munich and selling Germany a Zulu expo NE, then liberated Kiev (2-3 times), then Ulundi, leaving him Nobamba. Shaka was just laying waste to all my coastal CS - I had 2 whole Caravels for a navy for the longest time, and lost one. I must have reliberated Bratislava 3-4 times.

This map had a lot of fun features, but the lack of a decent Tradition coastal spot was frustrating, and nothing but CS Salt was irritating. The AI choices certainly made the early and mid-game much more challenging.

Clearly whomping Shaka early would have made for a much better game. I never DOW'd my continent, but I did DOW Neb before WF to lock in some CS and get him fighting everyone - plus I had spent 40 turns maneuvering GPeople and units to keep his eventual FOUR GPs from converting Delhi (what a pain). NONE had 4 uses, sheesh... Still, I only beat him by 120 hammers, 1093 to 970. Poc even got 484 in, I have never seen an Immortal game with so much AI WF attention (it only took like 3-4 turns to complete!).

Achievements:
Spoiler :
A. Children of Peace 6 pts - 69 million

B. Followers of Peace 1 pt - 18 cities (boo)

C. Wonders of Peace 3 pts - 14 wonders (neither bonus wonder). Built SoH the last turn to get one more point :lol:

D. Happy Peace 17 pts 169

E. Early Peace 0 pts :blush:

F. Great Peace 0 pts 2043 :blush:

G. Prophets of Peace 3 pts

H. Neighbours of Peace 3 pts - 7 with resurrected Germany

I. Resolutions of Peace 1 pt - WR, only made 2 proposals, wanted WF first

J. Points of Peace 8 pts - 139 fpt + 681 cpt
Spoiler :
 

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Dead, T144.

Spoiler :
Well, this was fairly disastrous.

Given the start I figured I'd try for OCC Petra and peace out with every AI. Missed out on Hanging Gardens, Oracle and Petra all by 1-2 turns and somehow didn't rage-quit. Got Mausoleum but (yay?).

Shaka destroyed Bismarck without my help. I bribed him with silver and 5gpt and we were friends for a while. As soon as all the German cities were gone Shaka marched ~10 Impis plus a handful of composite bowmen and trebuchets into Delhi. My ~8 composite bowmen and 4 pikemen offered little resistance.

Think I'll try settling a couple of extra cities next time and focus only on Petra rather than other wonders. A coastal city seems crucial, if only to better meet other AIs and bribe Shaka to war with them instead.
 
Tips for anyone struggling with the neighbour on this map:

Spoiler :
1. Get your religion up quick and get it into all his cities for a huge diplo boost.
2. Give him lots of free gifts
3. Don't build too many cities in his direction.
4. Accept his offers to go to war - the other neighbour won't be able to reach you and is a pushover by comparison.
5. If all else fails, have a lot of elephants just in case.
 
I rage quit when it made me go 13 turns over the limit for the first GP and another civ founded a religion. :D
 
Ok, so I went back, loaded up, and kept playing. Now that I have read the spoilers in this thread, I'm embarrassed by how awful I played. I tried the same approach as vadalaz - but with much less skill.

Spoiler :
Elephant rushed the Zulu, but tried to pull it off with a single warrior. Took their conquered Munich, took one of their own cities, burned both to the ground, then . . . as I was closing in on their final 2 cities, saw 3 impi. No way am I crushing that with 2 CB, 5 elephants and a warrior.


Guess I'll go do something productive today.

Great setup, and props to consentient! A lot of fun.
 
I did an experiment and if going Freedom with most typical happiness buildings + pagoda, an additional city is essentially happiness free when it hits size 10 (cancels the 6 unhappiness for founding), and it will generate 2 extra happiness when it hits size 22. If the city also has watermill, windmill, circus, stonework, mint, the maximum happiness it can hit is at size 25 and it will generate 5 excess happiness.
 
The goal of my game was to get as high population as possible as well as high happiness. So the plan inspired by Valadaz was to clear the continent but in my case I also clear most of the other continent. Only by clearing out the AI, it is possible to get more space to plant more cities. It becomes tricky to squeeze cities as tight as possible and I didn't really plan ahead for it.

TLDR version 573 happiness, 56 cities, 1.135 billion population, 462k lifetime culture.

Spoiler :

Initially, liberty 3 city rushed my continent with the UU and Shaka was a joke to defeat at this difficulty. Burned most of their cities due to not having enough happiness to support. Since Shaka made peace with Germany after taking Berlin without taking his last city, I was forced to also destroy Germany without possibility of liberation.

DF pantheon into pagoda religion. Took happiness garden, cheap GPr enhancer. Took Liberty GE to rush petra, filler policy into piety cheaper buildings.

Indian UA is just insane, once the cities are large enough with happiness buildings, then excess happiness starts accumulating and I was able to plant more cities pre ideology. Note that while normal civs have local happiness capped by population, India has local happiness capped by 66% of population, but their unhappiness is only .5 per population, so by a certain size, all their cities will generate excess happiness if all the happiness buildings are built, and these can offset the unhappiness from planting that city. These excess happiness pretty much acts like global happiness and can cover the unhappiness caused by planting new cities. My in game testing shows that pretty much each city can generate enough excess happiness by size 10 to cover the -6 from planting that city. If allowed to grow, depending on ideology, reach their maximum happiness at size 20-25. Autocracy has by far the highest possible happiness due to courthouse and can reach maximum happiness at size 42 assuming every source of happiness is available, from SP, buildings etc.

On the other continent, Indonesia was killed off by Assyria, and Assyria killed off by Shoshone. Sweden spammed wonders, and Babylon just did their thing and teched. Obviously Sweden is easy to take and I was able to do so with Battleships. Also I also conquered his military CS ally as I wanted more cities. Went for Shoshone after Radar, liberated Indonesia (which had 6 green diplo modifier at the end but he was at different continent). In the end, reduced Shoshone to 1 city. After that, killed off Babylon. Also I planted more cities on 2nd continent. Used all my GG on stealing land from CS or the remaining civs so that cities has better tiles to work. It was necessary to not kill off Shoshone or I would've won CV. Also it was necessary to liberate Jakarta due to not wanting to win dom.

My ideology was Freedom for the obvious growth benefit, I also pushed everything that increased culture in the WC. Wide play meant my culture cost is extremely high since I needed to micromanage conquered cities by annexing. Note that annexing cities as India generate extra -10 instead of -5 happiness until courthouse. Initially I wanted to play until close to turn 500 but later realized it was impossible due to the UB generating tourism after Flight and that it can't be deleted. I also conquered all CS except the ones generating culture/food as those are valuable. Notice that DoWing CS doesn't drop the rest influence of CS that are allied with me already. So in my case only drops the influence of CS at war with me and since it will be conquered, it won't ever matter.

Plan was to switch ideology to Autocracy by passing world ideology. That will generate enough pressure to dissident and allow the change. The 2 free tenets will cover the loss of 2. By going Autocracy, I lose the food from specialists so most cities will start to starve, but gain massive amount of happiness from courthouses and Prora, so I did the change anyway and got me around 50 additional happiness. At the end, built CN tower to generate even more pop and happiness. It gave me an additional 62 happiness and 90mil population. End happiness was a new record for me, at 573. This is also my first ever game over 10k point.

Achievements:
Spoiler :

A. Children of Peace
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1134 million
1134/10 - 1 = 112 pts

B. Followers of Peace
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
69 cities, entire world
69/10 - 1 = 6 pts

C. Wonders of Peace
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
1075 wonder points
1075/100 - 1 = 10
BONUS 1pt for each of Taj Mahal and Red Fort (conquered both)
10 + 2 = 12 pts

D. Happy Peace
- - - - - - - - - -
573 happiness
573/10 = 57 pts

E. Early Peace
- - - - - - - - -
T428
None

F. Great Peace
- - - - - - - - - -
11092 points = 3 points

G. Prophets of Peace
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
16 Great Prophets (including 2 for founding/enhancing + 1 from piety finisher)
16 - 2 = 14 pts

H. Neighbours of Peace
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
No neighbors

I. Resolutions of Peace
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Pass World Religion = 1 points
Pass World Ideology = 2 points
Both, in fact passed world ideology twice.
1 + 2 = 3 pts

J. Points of Peace
- - - - - - - - - - - -
687 Fpt, 3898 Cpt
687 + 3898 = 4585/100 = 46 pts

Total:
112 + 6 + 12 + 57 + 0 + 3 + 14 + 0 + 3 + 46
= 253 points




Spoiler :


 
Haha nice one Scib. This is another problem with achievements if the points are uncapped!

253 points is probably more than the rest of the IAG series combined! :D
 
One thought - how did you avoid winning a CV anyway? Surely with Tourism that high it was enough to slowly influence everyone that remained?
 
One thought - how did you avoid winning a CV anyway? Surely with Tourism that high it was enough to slowly influence everyone that remained?

I delayed internet as long as possible and only won IG 2 turns before winning for extra happiness, I also took Sacred Sites for reformation just to see how much tourism it would add up a few turns before victory. The screen shot shows the IG tourism. One of the remaining AI did control around 75% of the continent at one point and that generated a lot of culture for him anyway. Even without IG it wouldn't last until the next vote anyway. More is needed, such as gifting AI cities can delay it but I just didn't want to do it.
 
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