Anybody done "Into the Renaissance" scenario, yet?

[Genghis_Sean]

In my quest to knock out more achievements, I was looking to do this one. I began with England on Emperor and played half an hour or so before quitting. Anybody know of a walkthrough? I was getting bogged down fighting Boudicea. France was expanding like mad to my south and Boudicea north and already had a fleet. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to liberate Jeruselum on the other side of the world to gain the achievement. Seems pretty hard.

Moderator Action: Moved to G&K.

 

[Scarpa]

Here are a couple good threads about it:

This one starts with a nice write up and continues into a good strategy discussion:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=467709

This is another good one:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=468645

 

[Thibaulthc]

just started with Saladin, but felt on a bug after 70 turns:
I coudnt get enough influence Jerusalem or Mecca to get the founder's benefits of my religion, so I attacked Jerusalem and took it (which also prevent another civ to get the founder beliefs bonus)
But I still don't have the benefits of the founder's beliefs
(and one is 'tihe' or another name in that scenario, +1 for every 4 followers... there are 26 cities under islam influence, so I must have like 200 followers maybe, that's a 50 / turn bug ...

Anybody else with that issue?
Or did I misunderstand the "having control of your holy city or jerusalem"

 

[Thibaulthc]

also sometimes dont get VP for taking cities with another religion... gamebreaking bug when it happens on a 20+ pop city which is worth 500 Victory Points

any help?

 

[gunnergoz]

Just played Saladin on King and won by taking most of Italy in the last 60 turns, getting big points for each city I'd take due to their different religion from my own. It was close though since the Byzantines were constantly winning the HRE throne. Fun game.

 

[Halcyan2]

Just played Saladin on King and won by taking most of Italy in the last 60 turns, getting big points for each city I'd take due to their different religion from my own. It was close though since the Byzantines were constantly winning the HRE throne. Fun game.

Yeah, the Byzantines tend to do well since they control their Holy City since the beginning.

If you do enough warring, you can easily surpass them either way (take out 2 other civs of another religion and it should be more than enough).

If you want to be on the safe side, you can target the Byzantines for extermination and get points doing it (unless you are Russia, though Russia can then get holy city points every turn if it takes Constantinople).

 

[knighterrant81]

Just won as Spain. Tried a few times as England, but quit because it was just too depressing. You can take about 100-120 turns to consolidate the British Isles and still have plenty of time to sew up a win, I think. Just go on a holy war against Islam after you've sent all your Caravels off and rack up points. Don't sweat city states.

The turns take forever. Lets not make the victory condition "score at the end of x turns" anymore, at least not with these huge maps, hmm k?

 

[Yzman]

Yeah I am playing this right now and basically just pressing end turn...still taking me a few hours.

 

[Carnid]

I am playing right now as Orange of Orangia "Look-at-us-we-paint-everything-orange-so-Japan-will-have-their-palace-in-Kyoto-Orange-too-because-we're-the-only-foreigners-that-have-good-trade-relations-with-them-because-they-think-we're-so-ridiculous". Thought I had a good start with a great start location, full of rivers and grasslands and hills and tons of citrus to trade. About 20 turns into the game Austria attacks me with about 6 swordsman and 4 catapults that I manage to throw off, but the fat old lady just kept on allying herself with every bloody city-states on the map and buying them off. I'm at 191 points 66 turns in and she's sitting with 1365 points! Catherine is second with 435! I'm playing on immortal, but I easily win on emperor so I figured it was a good opportunity to try immortal. Guess I was wrong.

Also, I think she's hacking. The city-states nearby my cities coordinates their attack perfectly with Austria, they surround my town, and then bam, she buys them off and suddenly I have two times more Austrians to kill. Not cool brah, not cool.

 

[Halcyan2]

Just won as Spain. Tried a few times as England, but quit because it was just too depressing. You can take about 100-120 turns to consolidate the British Isles and still have plenty of time to sew up a win, I think. Just go on a holy war against Islam after you've sent all your Caravels off and rack up points. Don't sweat city states.

The turns take forever. Lets not make the victory condition "score at the end of x turns" anymore, at least not with these huge maps, hmm k?

IMHO, the best option for England or the Celts is to rush the other one ASAP. Use your initial settler and settle aggressively. Crank out units ASAP. Ideally, you can wipe out the other guy around Turn 40-60 (if you're at 100-120 then you should be attacking much earlier).

Once you have the British Isles, you can optionally secure a foothold into continental Europe by beating up France. I did this by having France fight Spain and the Netherlands and then taking him from the rear. I'll have to check but I recall finishing up France around turn 100 or so. You don't get many points for this since they are still your religion at this point, but I felt like I had a much stronger position by first taking out France, not to mention the extra luxuries/gold.

After that, I split my forces, with half heading to the southwest for the Almohads and the other half going for the Byzantines.

 

[Petiscator]

I tried it with Austria, and it's even more OP in the scenario. At the end of the game, I bought off EVERY SINGLE city-state on the map because of such a strong economy. Taking off the Byzantines with them and allying and buying the Vatican is worth a big chunk of points. During my last turn, I had conquered the whole Byzantium, Turkey and France, half of the Ayyubids and my empire extended from north Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary, rest of eastern europe, Turkey, middle east and Arabia, with a few cities on Tunisia and Malta. It's SERIOUSLY overpowered.

I played on prince though, it was my first GnK scenario and I soon moved on to King. Russia was crashed by the mongols quite early in the game, and England kept fighting the Netherlands for some reason.

In general, I won every single HRE, sailed all the available caravels to west (from my rush bought Lisbon. It was seriously made with the only purpose of being married with Austria), conquered 3 and a half major civs and had more than 12 thousand score. I'm right sure it couldn't be done in higher difficulties, but it seemed way easy to win as them.

 

[Loucypher]

I went with the Netherlands, Commerce + Patronage. This way, I was able to get enough gold to keep the fat lady from buying up all the city states (It helped that she was keen to buy my Sugar, Crabs and Gems), and for the rest I turtled up. Denmark was all Swamp so I settled a city there (Glorious, Glorious polders). Due to the English-Celts war, they were too busy to get Caravels, and since I had Amsterdam as a mass production city, I could race 3 of those out (Spain and France each got 1, but they were a non-factor otherwise). Thanks to my turtling up I could simply sit back, gather gold, and have Austria and France act as a buffer towards Russia and Byzantium. Ended up winning by a landslide.

 

[Thibaulthc]

In my emperor game with Saladin, Austria had married every CS but Belgrade (conquered) and Antwerp. I was behind in points for the 175 first turns.

My only friend, the "Ayyudabis" ? (Morocco) helped me a lot for the Caravel explorations: he had the control of the Gibraltar area and most of the civs had no open borders with him, so I sent 4 caravels and he sent the second one. Pretty weird that the netherlands or celts didnt send any...

Nice scenario despite some annoying bugs (I couldnt get VP for taking Constantinople and another small city AND I didnt get benefits of founder's belief after taking Jerusalem and then had to attack Mecca also).

Saladin has some challenging sides (only desert excepted the Nile, so impossible to have 10 cities, wide empire with distant cities, has to cross oceans to attack other religions, no contact with CS,...)

My history:

Spoiler :

I took Jerusalem and Mecca early, Islam founder's belief gives you for each 4 followers (roundly 120 at the end of the game); I attacked the Turks because thy didn't want me to cross their borders, took them two-3 cities then I decided that was enough time wasted at attacking my brothers. Byzantines were very strong, but at some point every Civ DoWed them, so I rushed through the Mediterranean 'oceans' and took all her remaining cities, with some Austrian help.

At about turns 150, all the non-Islamic civs dowed me. Rough time on the oceans, and I had to defend two coastal cities also. But I've been able to keep them, and settled up a good defense line vs Austria and her very wide empire. I then sent 4 out of the 5 caravels to the west (1100 VP!) and spent the 10 last turns defending against Austria.