[BTS] Am I completely and utterly screwed here?

[CGQ]

I attached both the current save game and the starting 4000 B.C. one for anyone who wants to take a gander at this map.

Spoiler I hate this game sometimes :

God I hate the Apostolic Palace. They are the vain of my existence in this game. So I had a decent immortal game going with Genghis, attacked Shaka with Cat + Elephants (albeit a bit late), made peace when he had one city for a bunch of techs, went for Zara (while waiting for 10 peace turns), killed off Shaka, managed to take a bunch of Zara's cities. Then "Vote to stop fighting with brother/sister of the faith" comes up, and me being the conniving warmonger I am, I voted "Never!" which resulted in a round of "the world considers you a villain," immediately tanking my already struggling economy. Okay..no problem I can just take more cities...4 turns later, AGAIN same vote comes up...I vote never...-10 Happiness in nearly all my cities. They're all building wealth and working commerce. -94 GPT on 0% with 20 CITIES. To top it off...I lost the lib race, really wanted to lib steel but I barely managed EDU, let alone gunpowder, chemistry, etc. Am I screwed here? Can this game even be salvaged? Where did I go wrong?

My initial stack headed for Shaka:

State of my empire now:

For the record, my tech path was AGRI>Mining>BW>Fishing>Pottery>Writing>AH>Math>Construction>HB>Currency>CoL>Feud. The rest I got either with trades or peace deal.

 

[Gumbolt]

Looking pretty bleak to be honest. Even at peace you are losing gold at 100% tax.

You can certainly whip some court houses. 4 pop whips are never great. You have a lot of undeveloped land.

The WCYAV will go after 20 turns?

You are behind in tech too.

Peace might help but you will probably be getting return city to their rightful owner votes each 9-10 turns. Unless you wipe out Zara? His roaming HA will likely take back a city without peace.

Sometimes it's good to pause and recover the economy. Long term you need to spread the Ap vote so Joall does not win the votes all the time.

Once the AI have longbow/mace phants wars can be pretty tough. Your UU is a very strong unit but even against mace it's odds won't be good..

 

[a pen-dragon]

IMHO as soon as the AP religion is in more than a couple of cities one should never defy a resolution, due to the hit to the economy. Just vote no, and if the resolution passes, that generally is better than five unhappiness in most of the cities.

Here the AP religion also should be spread into all your cities ASAP, since that would get you sufficient votes to block any resolution.

In this specific case, why do you insist on finishing Zara now? There is at least one more continent of people you have not met and to go to war with Joao better units would be nice. Further conquest now will only slow you down. The cities you are conquering probably need about 40 commerce to compensate for the maintenence. Hence courthouses and the forbidden palace should be a priority.

As a general observation, 6 workers for 20 cities at this stage is too few.

Btw, signing peace now and doing a bit of micro allows breaking even, so I believe this to be still salvagable with some precise playing. (Zara is willing to give some tech)

Trading for Drama and running the Culture slider could be worth it, since it could prevent your cities from starving down too much while you recover.

At this point you should probably already have forges in all core cities. You have had Gold and Gems since conquering Shaka and are about to have Silver. You are passing up on 2 (soon 3) happiness and some production in each city.

 

[lymond]

Yeah, in my experience, there are two ways to mitigate AP resolutions. Become dominant in the religion yourself..asap. Or track the AP vote timer ..it is 10 turns and you can see in one of the screens (someone please help him with that). Manage your wars with the timer...if needed, you can take ceasefires during the vote which has no 10 turn peace treaty, so you can declare again immediately. Defying I always try to avoid unless doing so is basically non impactful...like one crappy city with the reli.

Also, if one can, consider bribing AP Guys into war with each other or anybody

 

[Gumbolt]

I think his war was spent here anyway. 6 workers kills it really and Zara's remaining cities were likely average. The AP unhappiness is only in cities that have the religion.

Start wise if you had seen the ivory then the one further west with cows/gold made a great settler pump with imperialist.

Going fishing early on would of been annoying. Settling on a flood plain too felt wrong here. Settle on the ivory and the 3rd city is settled by 2440bc. Gold up and running much earlier Likely have a 4th city just before 2000bc. Pends how many workers you fit in.

 

[soundjata]

The most easy way -I think- to get rid of the "AP villain" status is to vote for a resolution that passes. Then all related unhappiness goes poof.

Gifting a city before taking it back again also removes (most?/all?) unhappiness debufs. Whip and Draft anger for sure ; AP and Nuclear villain i'm not sure
@Kaitzilla knows all I presume

 

[Gumbolt]

Took this snippet from an old post.
--- Villain - "The world considers you a villain!"

Cities with Villain status suffer a Happiness Penalty of 5 . The Happiness Penalty lasts for 20 turns but this duration is reduced for other religions present in the city. Further Defiances prolong the duration of Villain status.

 

[antimony]

Voting for a resolution that passed doesn't stop the unhappiness I think but just restores your eligibility for AP residency e.g.

 

[6K Man]

Took this snippet from an old post.
--- Villain - "The world considers you a villain!"

Cities with Villain status suffer a Happiness Penalty of 5 . The Happiness Penalty lasts for 20 turns but this duration is reduced for other religions present in the city. Further Defiances prolong the duration of Villain status.

You're never screwed when you have a 3:2 city ratio with the top AI

Go into revolt ASAP - the longer the better. Change ALL the civics, but keep Slavery.

Whip courthouses (to save money) and if other religions are an option, whip missionaries and spread other religions to dilute the unhappiness.

Keep slogging at Zara, see if you can kill him off.

 

[aitkensam]

Played this map out from the initial save as it looked like a fun continent.

Spoiler :

Domination in early 1600s. I got a pretty slow start. Construction rushed Shaka in the very late BCs. Lib -> Astro late in 1060AD. Had some fun settling the free islands. Economy really picked up around then and so Cavalry rushed Joao who foolishly switched out of our Jewish love-fest. Left Zara alone and sailed to the other continents to kill a bunch of backwards folk and get Domination.

This was tech situation after vassaling Joao. Still only our continent has Paper............