1.18 India (Help!!!)

[Apple111111]

Okay, there's no question that the Indian UHV is absolutely crazy.

Buildings cities all over India and uniting the subcontinent to get those temples, while fending from the Huna armies was insanely tight, only to be challenged by a third UHV which is absolutely off the wall insane.

Essentially, my strategy here involved the Wat, just as it did for Burma, Khmer and Tibet. (Seriously, the wonder is insane and forms the core of so many East Asian UHV strategies.) Either way, I used it this time for the +1 pop in all cities buff. Getting it ready precisely for 1200AD and having a massive swarm of settlers ready to found a bunch of 3 pop cities, that get boosted straight to 4.

As you can see, I conquered Tibet, which was honestly a waste of Varus, and I took Panyu for the stone to double Wat build speed and Linxiang just because why the hell not, some extra population is nice.

Only problem is... This is only 16 of the 20 required pop percent. That means I'd need about 50 more pop if I actually wanted to win the UHV!

I thought I had it in the bag with my strategy, but the population required for this is insane... Has anyone got any suggestions for how they could push the required population up to 20%??

 

[Apple111111]

For civics I ran Despotism, Caste System, Clergy, Personalism, Merchant Trade, Hegemony until 700AD.

After 700AD, for the third goal, I switched to Elective, Caste System, Syncretism, Personalism, Merchant Trade, Hegemony.

 

[Apple111111]

I went into world builder for doing a bit of calculating. I used city editor to edit a cities' pop by 1. This raised the goal by 0.08. 100/0.08 gives an estimated value of 1250, meaning the total world pop in this game is 1250. Obviously, 20% of that is needed for victory, meaning an empire of about 250 population.

Yikes.

 

[Tao paï paï]

The strategy is to set tech to 0 very soon and build endlessly many armies, that you will send 10-15 turns before the deadline to attack simultaneously Indochina, independents cities in southern China, Indonesia and maybe even Japan (this 20 size Koube is a tempting target). Focus on the bigger cities in priority and try to spare them if you have the money.

I hit something like 19.1 -19.2% on a Paragon/normal game (so without Wat), with towns instead of farms (I thought it counted for pop) and attacks way too progressive, wich caused strike too soon. So I think that without such mistakes it should be doable.

 

[Apple111111]

I dialed back to 700AD, and I tried again with a conquest oriented strategy, in addition to the settler spam and the Wat. Unfortunately, it didn't get me as far as I hoped due to the strength of Cho-Ko-Nus and the independent/barbarian spam in the Chinese region. Conquest also weakened my economy significantly, so I ended up being unable to spam more units via citizenship. The Wat requires civil service so I bulbed ethics+scholarship, but had to waste a couple hundred coins on getting civil service itself, which could've got me two extra varus.

I also had to switch to poor civics to keep stability high in the last few turns, which led to a massive strike.

Anyways, this is only 15.82% of the world; marginally worse than last time...

 

[a pen-dragon]

I did not play this (yet) but I think that delaying the settlers is a mistake. Stability should not be a problem and overall India is quite rich. Founding some of these cities earlier means bigger, more developed cities, and thus more population. Cities which have food and give territory should be prioritized, while "fillers" can be delayed.
IMHO hals of your new cities could comfortably be grown to size 8-10, adding in total about 30 pop.

Also it might be worth it to raze some cities you do not want to take, as late as possible, to avoid collapseing.

Furthermore India has respectable production, admittedly not in the ganges valley, but since the entire peninsula is conquered early this is not a problem. Thus it is more useful to actually produce the military, since buying with citizenship increases the upkeep by 2/turn (+inflation). I would prefer to build my units, if that is not possible whip and only buy in emergencies and make sure the bought units die first.

Economy-wise it would be advisable to scout a bit to get foreign, and if possible overseas, trade routes. Malaya + Java are definitely worth it.

 

[Dracosolon]

I did it a while ago, before Isolationism was nerfed to only give +1 to certain specialists (it's probably harder now, especially since a lot of India's specialists are gonna be Priests and Scientists). Dujiangyan in your starting capital is a must along with Redistribution (plus Monarchy and Theocracy for and and Caste System and Syncretism for more ).

 

[Tao paï paï]

View attachment 704768
I dialed back to 700AD, and I tried again with a conquest oriented strategy, in addition to the settler spam and the Wat. Unfortunately, it didn't get me as far as I hoped due to the strength of Cho-Ko-Nus and the independent/barbarian spam in the Chinese region. Conquest also weakened my economy significantly, so I ended up being unable to spam more units via citizenship. The Wat requires civil service so I bulbed ethics+scholarship, but had to waste a couple hundred coins on getting civil service itself, which could've got me two extra varus.

I also had to switch to poor civics to keep stability high in the last few turns, which led to a massive strike.

Anyways, this is only 15.82% of the world; marginally worse than last time...

Don't need to rush your unit with gold, you have plenty of time to build units, the prod in the subcontinent is not as crappy as in 1.17. And don't care about stability, if you launch your great invasion 10 turns before the deadline, you won't have time to collapse.

I finally succeeded on Paragon/normal, I set tech to 0 after Generalship and started building military, one big army conquered almost all of Indochina, and an other southern China. I hit 20.1% just on time in 1200AD, just after founding 8 extra cities with settlers who were waiting, and happily the strike hit me just in 1190, it didn't have time to delete my units.

At the end I had a population of 260.

Spoiler :

 

[a pen-dragon]

I did it on Monarch/Normal. I only settled the India peninsula. Cities marked C are the ones I did build immediately before the deadline, cities marked m are ones I could not build due to the Rise of the Mughals... so there is room for optimization. I ended up having around 21% of the world population, or 255 population points. I do not know exactly, because I had a vassal, and apparently they currently do not count towards this goal. I will suggest this to change.

The important wonders for me were Dujiangyan, Kajurano (I think) for +1food on state religion buildings and Wat. I also had Jetavanaramaya but basically no artists.

I did nothing fancy with my civics, only a bit of whipping to use the food this start has, Manoralism to improve and then Caste and Syncretisysm for the food. I did not use monarchy, although maybe I should have, but I figured that my capital would grow nicely anyway and Monarchy wouold only let it grow inti unhealthiness.

Also I put my capital one tile south to not ruin the floodplain.

Spoiler :

 

[banzay13]

20% of world ppl - it's not numbers of cites pop, it's population in millions of ppl.
Grow some cites tall. Very tall

 

[Apple111111]

Is that actually true? If so, that definitely changes the strategy a lot…

 

[banzay13]

Is that actually true? If so, that definitely changes the strategy a lot…

it was so in 1.17 in all task (uhv) with pop challenge, as i remember
I don't think it's not same in 1.18
EDIT. I played India with first version of 1.18, found capital on different spot...
It wasn't hard to get 20% of pop, as it was in 1.17 as i remember

 

[Apple111111]

it was so in 1.17 in all task (uhv) with pop challenge, as i remember
I don't think it's not same in 1.18
EDIT. I played India with first version of 1.18, found capital on different spot...
It wasn't hard to get 20% of pop, as it was in 1.17 as i remember

I tested with world builder and I can confirm this is not the case anymore. Each population added, regardless of city size, adds the exact same amount to the percentage displayed.

 

[banzay13]

I tested with world builder and I can confirm this is not the case anymore. Each population added, regardless of city size, adds the exact same amount to the percentage displayed.

How many pop you have added? you need 2-3 cites with pop ~30

 

[Apple111111]

How many pop you have added? you need 2-3 cites with pop ~30

I added just one pop to cities of sizes 1, 4 and 13 respectively and noticed that the goal was altered by the exact same percentage regardless of city size.

 

[banzay13]

I added just one pop to cities of sizes 1, 4 and 13 respectively and noticed that the goal was altered by the exact same percentage regardless of city size.

Try with big cites. Really big)

 

[Apple111111]

Try with big cites. Really big)

Tried with a 50 pop city, and the population rise by adding 1 pop is still the exact same as adding 1 pop to a 1 pop city.

Big cities don’t seem to be the solution. Don’t know if it’s always been this way or if they’ve changed it recently

 

[banzay13]

Tried with a 50 pop city, and the population rise by adding 1 pop is still the exact same as adding 1 pop to a 1 pop city.

Big cities don’t seem to be the solution. Don’t know if it’s always been this way or if they’ve changed it recently

I'm just remembered - i was running with three big core cites, controlled whole India, Sri-Lanka, Persia and some Indochina's territory and got 22%

 

[WhiteEyes]

I can't even build 15 temples in time, let alone 25. You guys are amazing.

 

[WhiteEyes]

TIL we can flip Delhi on the first turn if AI Harappa survives.

On a related note, do you guys think India can flip independent Delhi using culture brute force alone like Chengdu? Or were the only regular ways to get Delhi is by settling / using Swordsmen?