In which I went full Autocratic douche with China and went on a killing-conquering spree and came to Dominate the world.
I would like to write down a brief summary of the some 350-ish turn long game, and than tell you what my experience is.
Map types were continents, the size is standard.
Players:
Continent 1: William (that guy is stalking me), Boudicca, Gandhi, Wu Zetian (me)
Continent 2: Pocatello, Sejong, Ramesses II, Casimir III
I start in a lush green hilly area with a river, some jungle tiles to the south, and I also have access to dyes, bananas and gold.
Although I was planning to completely ignore religion altogether, the game would not let me to do so and threw free faith at me in hilarious quantities, from city states and ruins, so I ended up with Oral Tradition (tons of dyes and bananas and spices everywhere).
I start with Tradition, get down 3 cities in about 80 turns, pick up Temple of Artemis, Hanging Gardens and Oracle. After finishing Tradition I go Honor for some early fun.
I reduce Gandhi to 1 city quick, after which Boudicca attacks me, looses her whole army, and some 30-40 turns later I wipe her off the planet.
Funny enough, as I take her last city, the vision granted by that city makes me meet the Polish explorers from the other continent. In case you were wondering, this scenario did not give me a diplo penalty with them.
To my great frustration, the Poles found the World Congress, as my navy is close to 0 and stuck in the Ancient era. To make it worse, they have the Forbidden Palace. To make it EVEN worse, they were the only civ on their continent who got a Religion (all four of us over here got their own, and I was the 2nd civ after the celts to get one! I think I used Hagia Sofia for this purpose), and guess what they propose first? World Religion: Buddhism. Both Pocatello and Ramesses follow that religion, and it passes, giving Casimir 6 delegates while I have 1.
Sejong? Sejong got wiped out by Pocatello even before I declared war on Gandhi. I have to say I'm grateful he acted such.
Apart from these early difficulties however, I soon get my science rolling and afterwards my game was indistinguishable from a King game (killing Boudicca wasn't very easy, her forest was annoying). I get the tech advantage, wipe out Gandhi (he was spamming missionaries), than take Amsterdam. Upgrade Military, land in Egypt, just after Pocatello takes Thebes (I get the Egyptian capital without ever DOW-ing Egypt). And from here, it's the usual steamroll.
Autocracy makes conquest very easy. I forgot to mention that I had serious happiness issues until I got it, even when I only had 3 cities, as all 3 of them were growing like MAD. I had to stop growth in them to save some smiles for conquest. Prora and Neuchwanstein (or whatever it's called), coupled with the Aut. happiness doctrines (from barracks, castles and courhouses) solves ALL my happiness problems permanently. I get lots of money, use gunboat diplomacy, take control of the world congress, knock Casimir out of his "I will get a diplo victory" seat, liberate Sejong (for 6 free delegates as he too is following the bloody world religion), destoy Pocatello, than get nukes and a few turns later, take Warsaw for the Dom. Victory.
So why am I starting a thread about this?
Well, for starters I wanted to brag about winning on Emperor, as a few weeks ago I was struggling on king
But the big thing I wanted to ask is why is this game so easy? By "easy" I mean that once you start snowballing nobody bothers to shut you down. All you need to do is survive the early game, and I'm pretty sure it's the same for any difficulty. Once you get ahead in tech you will just get even more ahead. The AI sucks at warfare. William could have took his capital back for about a hundred turns as it was completely unguarded and haven't even had a wall (at this point I was still poor).
Casimir could have destroyed my whole land army as it was moving in to attack him, my ships were on the other side of the continent. Even after I killed 2 civs there were loads of things they could have done to shut me down. Including an Embargo in the face, as everybody hated me (until Poland adopted Autocracy too). He had machine guns, battleships and....hussars? I was 4 tech ahead of him, why did he not upgrade them to tanks? Or at least Landships? He had the Manhattan project, why did he not nuke my army? (I was prepared for it, but he didn't even try). Why did he not intercept my nukes? Why did he not use his submarines and battleships to bombard my navy? He literally didn't even touch my ships, and we are talking ranged attacks here. Free damage. Hello?
And so on, and so on. The fact that the only thing that threatens my victory is the unfair early advantage the AI has and a disgusting diplo state with Forbidden Palace is a huge fun-killer. (Also, for the love of god, STOP RANDOMLY BANNING LUXURIES).
Are there any mods that make the game more interesting? Also, make a non-violent victory...not an auto-victory? My 1 city challenge with Babylon where I got a diplo victory made me realise that as long as you remain peaceful and have a modern army to turtle with, you are guaranteed to get a peaceful victory. The only reason why I went dom now is that it's by far more difficult than the other 3, you have a lot more to manage, and frankly, I have no idea how you can pull off a dom. victory in multiplayer.
That was a lot. Any thoughts, comments?
I would like to write down a brief summary of the some 350-ish turn long game, and than tell you what my experience is.
Map types were continents, the size is standard.
Players:
Continent 1: William (that guy is stalking me), Boudicca, Gandhi, Wu Zetian (me)
Continent 2: Pocatello, Sejong, Ramesses II, Casimir III
I start in a lush green hilly area with a river, some jungle tiles to the south, and I also have access to dyes, bananas and gold.
Although I was planning to completely ignore religion altogether, the game would not let me to do so and threw free faith at me in hilarious quantities, from city states and ruins, so I ended up with Oral Tradition (tons of dyes and bananas and spices everywhere).
I start with Tradition, get down 3 cities in about 80 turns, pick up Temple of Artemis, Hanging Gardens and Oracle. After finishing Tradition I go Honor for some early fun.
I reduce Gandhi to 1 city quick, after which Boudicca attacks me, looses her whole army, and some 30-40 turns later I wipe her off the planet.
Funny enough, as I take her last city, the vision granted by that city makes me meet the Polish explorers from the other continent. In case you were wondering, this scenario did not give me a diplo penalty with them.
To my great frustration, the Poles found the World Congress, as my navy is close to 0 and stuck in the Ancient era. To make it worse, they have the Forbidden Palace. To make it EVEN worse, they were the only civ on their continent who got a Religion (all four of us over here got their own, and I was the 2nd civ after the celts to get one! I think I used Hagia Sofia for this purpose), and guess what they propose first? World Religion: Buddhism. Both Pocatello and Ramesses follow that religion, and it passes, giving Casimir 6 delegates while I have 1.
Sejong? Sejong got wiped out by Pocatello even before I declared war on Gandhi. I have to say I'm grateful he acted such.
Apart from these early difficulties however, I soon get my science rolling and afterwards my game was indistinguishable from a King game (killing Boudicca wasn't very easy, her forest was annoying). I get the tech advantage, wipe out Gandhi (he was spamming missionaries), than take Amsterdam. Upgrade Military, land in Egypt, just after Pocatello takes Thebes (I get the Egyptian capital without ever DOW-ing Egypt). And from here, it's the usual steamroll.
Autocracy makes conquest very easy. I forgot to mention that I had serious happiness issues until I got it, even when I only had 3 cities, as all 3 of them were growing like MAD. I had to stop growth in them to save some smiles for conquest. Prora and Neuchwanstein (or whatever it's called), coupled with the Aut. happiness doctrines (from barracks, castles and courhouses) solves ALL my happiness problems permanently. I get lots of money, use gunboat diplomacy, take control of the world congress, knock Casimir out of his "I will get a diplo victory" seat, liberate Sejong (for 6 free delegates as he too is following the bloody world religion), destoy Pocatello, than get nukes and a few turns later, take Warsaw for the Dom. Victory.
So why am I starting a thread about this?
Well, for starters I wanted to brag about winning on Emperor, as a few weeks ago I was struggling on king
But the big thing I wanted to ask is why is this game so easy? By "easy" I mean that once you start snowballing nobody bothers to shut you down. All you need to do is survive the early game, and I'm pretty sure it's the same for any difficulty. Once you get ahead in tech you will just get even more ahead. The AI sucks at warfare. William could have took his capital back for about a hundred turns as it was completely unguarded and haven't even had a wall (at this point I was still poor).
Casimir could have destroyed my whole land army as it was moving in to attack him, my ships were on the other side of the continent. Even after I killed 2 civs there were loads of things they could have done to shut me down. Including an Embargo in the face, as everybody hated me (until Poland adopted Autocracy too). He had machine guns, battleships and....hussars? I was 4 tech ahead of him, why did he not upgrade them to tanks? Or at least Landships? He had the Manhattan project, why did he not nuke my army? (I was prepared for it, but he didn't even try). Why did he not intercept my nukes? Why did he not use his submarines and battleships to bombard my navy? He literally didn't even touch my ships, and we are talking ranged attacks here. Free damage. Hello?
And so on, and so on. The fact that the only thing that threatens my victory is the unfair early advantage the AI has and a disgusting diplo state with Forbidden Palace is a huge fun-killer. (Also, for the love of god, STOP RANDOMLY BANNING LUXURIES).
Are there any mods that make the game more interesting? Also, make a non-violent victory...not an auto-victory? My 1 city challenge with Babylon where I got a diplo victory made me realise that as long as you remain peaceful and have a modern army to turtle with, you are guaranteed to get a peaceful victory. The only reason why I went dom now is that it's by far more difficult than the other 3, you have a lot more to manage, and frankly, I have no idea how you can pull off a dom. victory in multiplayer.
That was a lot. Any thoughts, comments?
