Antiquity Challenge - Punic Enlightenment

[pmarc]

I thought it would be fun to have some informal challenges to compare strategies in the Age of Antiquity. This is not a GotM, so feel free to restart / replay the map to try different things. Please use spoiler tags to post your ideas / results.

In this challenge, we are playing as Ibn Battuta leading Carthage, and the goal is to research a Future Tech in Antiquity, the earlier the better. Difficulty is Sovereign.

The map is the new Pangaea Plus, Standard size (you + 7 opponents on the same landmass), all other settings to their default. There are no mementos.

Carthage cannot convert towns to cities, but every Merchant or Colonist (their unique settler) they obtain gets duplicated for free. Towns founded by Colonists also gain an additional population if settled adjacent to a resource. They also have the Punic Port, a unique coastal quarter that can be bought in towns, and the Numidian Cavalry, which can only be purchased with gold. Overall, it's a powerful economic civ, but its one-city restriction combined with the lack of any unique bonuses to science or culture can make tech and civic progression a challenge. At least, we have a very flexible leader to pair with it. Ibn Battuta is the only leader with the "Wildcard" attribute, allowing him to gain 2 wildcard attribute points when the first civic of the age is researched.

The save file is attached and the starting position is shown in the spoiler below. Note that Carthage was already founded in place, my understanding is that this will ensure the same independent powers (and perhaps also discoveries?) will spawn in each game.

Only the Carthage DLC is required for the save. I will make sure to use a no-DLC map next time, I was just really interested with the challenge for this particular civ.

Spoiler :

 

[RaidandTrade]

Sounds interesting. Deity, I presume?

 

[pmarc]

Sounds interesting. Deity, I presume?

Sorry, sovereign. I edited the post a bit to add more details.

 

[protocol7]

Worth mentioning, at least on Windows the place to put your save file is Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VII\Saves\Single

 

[protocol7]

Here are my results.


I started by scouting the area and going with pottery, given the plantations I could see in the area. For the same reason after my first scout I went with a granary on the river in the direction of the cotton. In terms of early city growth, I focused on gathering the resources in the area. With huts I prioritised food until I was big enough for settlers, and otherwise science if possible.

Ashoka of the Khmer was the first civ I met, and he (and the others) all got friendly greetings as I figured on pangea I'd have enough room to expand and I'd focus on science turtle. Writing 1 and 2 was an early priority for the library and codex, and sailing for the fishing quay. Normally for civics I go Discipline 1 and 2 to get a commander and Gate of All Nations quickly, but here for turtle mode I went mysticism for a pantheon. Despotism for government for the +20% science, and I spent my two wildcard points on the +science part of the scientific tree. Then, it was chain building colonists for a bit, fitting in the library when it became available. Early civics were the base ones for Carthage, getting the unique buildings and plus two settlement limit. For my pantheon, I went with God of the Sun for the general boost, though I wondered if the +1 science on quarters in settlements with an altar might be better in the long run. But I sort of doubted having lots of quarters.

I ran into Su Naxri to the west and pacified them. Afunato was also to the southwest, but had to die because I wanted to put a city there. I met Catherine as Rome to the southwest as I was settling along the coast. I built Maleth to the southeast, and Leptis was a highly rude forward settle against Catherine to the southeast. Both Ashoka and Catherine were a bit upset that I was settling cities close to their capitals, but there was really no other option we were all right on top of each other. I met Harriet of Maurya, Xerxes of Persia, and Lafayette of the Greek around this time, but didn't know where their capitals were. Celebrations started to appear around now, and I always chose +science and chose either +science or +gold policies since I'd be buying a lot of buildings in my colonies.

Around turn 33 (3200BCE) Ashoka denounced me, so I started augmenting my home defense force with slingers to discourage him. As far as techs here, I was focused on irrigation for more cities, masonry to get a little more base culture, bronze working to make sure my turtle was strong, and currency for that sweet gold. Ashoka declared war in 3100BCE, but the layout of Carthage made it a nightmare to attack. I focused my slingers in Maleth and it was quite easy to repel the invasion, but it felt so dirty to not have a commander earning XP. Next two colonies were Hippo to the southwest where Afunato was, and Utica to the northwest to get the camels. Next civic priority was getting to Code of Laws for merchants. Harriet also tried to denounce me, but I told her she wasn't allowed to. Bronze working 2 signaled the start of the counter-attack on Ashoka, and there was a massive battle over Hendraparvata in the east at just around the time I finally researched Discipline. Unfortunately, war elephants and a declaration from Tubman came and so I white peaced out.

The army repositioned to the southeast to defend against Tubman, just as I switched my tech focus towards Mathematics. I kept having to buy units so never quite got a chance to buy buildings in settlements, even now in 2500BCE. It was also around this point I noticed a bunch of barbarians had shown up around Utica, which was undefended except a couple emergency archers I bought after noticing.

Unfortunately, it fell soon after this picture. Tubman declared peace, though, and even gave me a city for the priviledge. Time to head the army back up north and deal with the remnants of the ones who razed Utica, but of course Ashoka declared war again so I headed over to deal with him.

Then, Tubman decided to join in. I built two new colonies - Motya and Oyat, roughly where Utica was. There was still a bunch of barbarians around so bought archers in both.

After finally getting to mathematics, I set the beeline for future tech and just focused on defense the rest of the game. For whatever reason Tubman would keep attacking, I would defend, and she'd give me a city for peace. Maleth finally fell to Ashoka, but honestly it was a blessing because it seems that was what was triggering the AIs to keep declaring war endlessly, though when Ashoka offered peace he proposed giving me an even bigger city again .

In the end, I missed getting future tech by about four turns. Basically, because I spent all my gold the whole game on units due to the chain war declarations. If I did it again, I'd prioritise a couple commanders to make the wars less disruptive, but I thought I was being smart by avoiding the cost. Turns out not!

 

[Manpanzee]

Are there any mementos slotted?

 

[pmarc]

No

 

[Manpanzee]

Fun challenge! Lots of different decision-making with such a narrow goal and no plans to continue past Antiquity.

Spoiler :

I completed Future Tech on turn 92, which is significantly faster than I had hoped possible.

Core strategy: Unlock the "+science per slotted resource" attribute node ASAP and milk it for all it's worth. That's three steps into the tree, meaning the top priority was pushing toward Ibn's extra narrative event attribute point. Requirements for that are "meet all civs, have three Scouts, then have three trade routes". This meant rushing Code of Laws before touching Carthage's unique civics tree. Downside was being slow to unlock settlement limit, but the Merchant rush synergizes nicely with the attribute in question, so I was happy to do it.

I got declared on by two AIs, and ended up pouring a lot more influence into war support and Military Aid than I would've liked. But it wasn't a huge problem. Screenshot below is the turn I captured Ashoka's capital and got out of one of the wars. 85 beakers are not bad at all for turn 58.

I found a science IP early and went for the free techs. Didn't get as many as I'd hoped due to the influence drain mentioned above. I did manage to get both The Wheel and Military Training from bulbs, but I'm not sure this actually helped me at all vs. just ignoring masteries and grabbing the main techs directly.

Other IP-related thing was prioritizing growth onto happiness-yield tiles in order to take advantage of Step Pyramids. I got a good number of them down eventually, but they came online late and shaved off at most one turn. I would've liked to push this even more by expanding into jungle for rural tiles with natural science yields. But I was restricted by all the nearby IPs. I had to take what I could get, expansion-wise, and my towns mostly weren't exactly where I would've wanted them to be in the absence of hostile IPs.

 

[pmarc]

@Manpanzee

Spoiler :

Well done! I was expecting the strategy around step pyramids to dominate, and in my initial attempt to make sure it was feasible, I just picked 2 diplo points and got to Future Tech on turn 111 (see attached save). I didn't expect you go reach 4 pts. in the science tree! (How did you get the 4th one?) Also, I noticed in your save that you got some bonus providing +5% to all yields (in addition to the incense and rice bonuses to science and food), but couldn't tell its source.

General comments on the map

Spoiler :

What I liked about this map is that the capital area looks very good (if not a bit akwardly shaped), but it gets tough from there with hostile IPs on one side and potentially hostile neighbors on the other. In my game, Ashoka also settled the gold spot NE of my capital very quickly, just like in @protocol7's game, and I was perenially at war with him and and Tubman.

Besides being too focused on war and neglecting merchants, the other mistake I did in my attempt was to overexpand to 2 over limit for a while, which led to ~0 global happiness in the midgame, reducing uptime on the +20% science bonus. On the other hand, maybe it doesn't matter that much since celebrations costs more and more and you really want to chain them back to back once your science is up. That said, there is no point to overexpand if you don't have the gold to build all the eligible step pyramids spots, so there is a compromise maybe between the gold and happiness income there.

How to use influence in this game is also an interesting question (as it is every time in the Antiquity I think, before hub towns trivialize the yield a bit). Having a few IPs suzerained is good (step pyramids obviously, free tech, +science on science buildings, free civic, +combat strength to ranged to defend in wars), but also, there are a lot of cultural leaders in this game, and maybe supporting some cultural endaevors would address that bottleneck.

 

[Manpanzee]

Also, I noticed in your save that you got some bonus providing +5% to all yields (in addition to the incense and rice bonuses to science and food), but couldn't tell its source.

I think this is just an Army Commander with Leadership promotion that's temporarily parked in Carthage. As for your other question...

Spoiler :

I got an additional attribute point from an Ibn Battuta narrative event, I believe upon researching Engineering. This event is recorded in the reference I'm using, but the description there suggests it's associated with the other path in Battuta's narrative chain (the one I didn't take). So I'm not sure what the deal is. I think I've heard people claim that Ibn Battuta also gets one more attribute from narrative events than other leaders, so maybe this is normal? Needs testing.