Call To Arms: CBO Weekly Civ Challenge

Spoiler :
Ouch....

That's the Impi timing for you.



Really nice write-up anyways, but yeah Deity is brutal. I'm happy to see you having fun with the challenge and hope you look forward to the next one, which would have been announced before this post, but I got caught up watching The International and forgot all about it :D.
 
This weeks challenge brings us to the Anatolian peninsula, and involves the Ottoman empire. I have decided that president Erdogan is not doing a good enough job trying to recreate the Ottoman empire, so that task now falls to you. Can you take control of the mess of uniques that makes up the Ottoman empire? Can you build a civilization that will stand the test of time?
 
Wait a minute, I'm reporting on my game ! :D

Civ: Brazil
Diff : 6 Emperor
Map : Continents, I think. 8 civs, 16 CS.

First, the interesting chart : the Tech chart.
Spoiler :


As I said last page, I wanted to try a Diplo or a Science Victory as Brazil. I tried to go tall Tradition, but found myself nearly alone on my island (though Austria was neighboring it, and China was close enough to grab some land before I settled it entirely.

Anyway, I wanted to keep my island to myself, so I "quickly" settled 11 cities. and This was a bad idea. I was last in techs, in military, and barely average in social policies until "mid medieval" (~1350 AD for me).

Then I researched Universities then got the Cultural boosts for Woodcamps.
This was also the time when I could finally get enough workers to build woodcamps in every jungle (present around every cities but 4) and lumbermills in forests.

With a little help from E&D's Archeology Event, I took the Tech lead and widened the gap, in Techs and in Policies.

In the end, I won a Cultural Victory (because, after all, I still built the Culture->Tourism buildings and sent my Great Musicians in other capitals), 1 turn away from finishing my Space Ship (and with the most Delegates in World Council), with both Travel Ban and Spaceship Regulations in place.
 
Just play a game with Ottomans, but i had great fun until start of Industrial i was then a little pissed off.
I was struggling since the renaissance in huge wave of unhappiness (around -15 to -30)
I was after i conquered 2 cities of Korean (i was around +10/15 happiness at this period). If at first it was fun to fight the unhappiness , then it's was really boring, even if i build every building in cities around -20 unhappiness you have -20% on all yield so even if my gold production isn't bad, -20% is a huge malus so people complain about poverty ... same for science and illeteracy... so step by step i fall behind.... Even my vassal Korea was ahead in all yield even if he had 2 cities (and lost his capital to me).
At the end of the Industrial/start of modern the game really bored me too much.

I know i have been some time i didn't play lastly very often, but did i something wrong, are there something new in the last 2/3 version i didn't see (i'm playing with the last beta 8/12) ? Because i had a really great start even in deity (i should maybe reduce the difficulty a little and try to come back to immortal) and i was really in the top players in my game at the start of the renaissance.
 
Wait a minute, I'm reporting on my game ! :D

Sounds like quite the adventure, but you missed the deadline, so no points for you ^^

Just play a game with Ottomans, but i had great fun until start of Industrial i was then a little pissed off.
I was struggling since the renaissance in huge wave of unhappiness (around -15 to -30)
I was after i conquered 2 cities of Korean (i was around +10/15 happiness at this period). If at first it was fun to fight the unhappiness , then it's was really boring, even if i build every building in cities around -20 unhappiness you have -20% on all yield so even if my gold production isn't bad, -20% is a huge malus so people complain about poverty ... same for science and illeteracy... so step by step i fall behind.... Even my vassal Korea was ahead in all yield even if he had 2 cities (and lost his capital to me).
At the end of the Industrial/start of modern the game really bored me too much.

I know i have been some time i didn't play lastly very often, but did i something wrong, are there something new in the last 2/3 version i didn't see (i'm playing with the last beta 8/12) ? Because i had a really great start even in deity (i should maybe reduce the difficulty a little and try to come back to immortal) and i was really in the top players in my game at the start of the renaissance.
No idea about this, sorry. Doesn't sound like an issue that's exactly isolated to the Ottomans however.
 
After some games with Ottoman, i'm back, i won't report the uninterresting one but just the last one :

I wanted to go for a peaceful game and play wide.
Settings normal, Immortal, COmmunitas, raging barb and that's all ( a few mod like info addict and patton bridge but nothing more).
I'm proud to announce my report : (i have added few comments on the pictures feel free to watch them)

The cold one
Hear me, hear us, I'm Suleiman the Magnificent Emperor of the Ottoman ; I'm... wait what did i say ? let's look the picture :
Spoiler :

So seems I'm Erdogan, and where am I ? Oh just click on the next spoiler balise and you will see !
Spoiler :


Well, let's dream about wealth and the warmth of Anatolia and the lovely girls and ...
Spoiler :

what ! Tundra and snow nord, desert south. Just one little tiny rivers...
Welcome to the dry and cold land of Anatolia.

But despite the weather or the land, we Ottoman are industruous people. Founding our first city on a forest, 2 turns later we got our explorer and what a good idea ! The land around us is surrounded by weak people that couldn't adapt to our homeland. We found 8 ancients ruins of lame settlers ! yes you didn't misread 8 ! 3 of them got production boost, 3 others a cultural artifact, one free technology, and some nomads who help us to grab some land around Istanbul.

The land is maybe a little bleak but after such exploration, you won't catch me complaining again. At least for the next few lines !

With so many rushed production we got a shrine and then a pantheon fast. Erdogan the industrious decided with 3 mineable luxuries to go for God of all creation (+1 :c5culture: / :c5happy: for founded pantheon and + 2 :c5faith: in the capital). Yep we could go for mine pantheon but i really find this pantheon awesome giving so much happiness and culture really fast with no improvements required. The only cons is the really low faith contribution [feel free to give me your opinion about that in your comments i'm really curious maybe i'm just a little too closed-minded] but i started near a natural wonder that give +4 :c5faith:, so founding a religion won't be a problem.

How should we call the God of all creation ? Zeus of course, so after the stonehedge we decided to build for him a great statue and in his goodwill he gave us a free forge... but we transformed it into a siege foundry :p
So if you look back again to the precedent picture you can see after only 50 turns i already have 2 tiles that give +6:c5production: and +2 :c5gold: in comparison a manufactury (the great ingeneer improvement) gives you on a hill +7:c5production: so i already have 2 "great improvement" tiles, thanks holy Zeus ! (and no need to rush the technology for the siege foundry like this !)

So it's decided lets first settle to the east, grabing a natural wonder to be sure to get enough faith income to get a religion. To sustain our growth in this dry land, we need a lot of farms so lets go for progress and mass and fast build farm on the countryside.
Then we settle our 3rd city near the desert to get the opportunity to build petra for another yummy trade route, but i was too slow.
Spoiler :


We continued our expansion to the east again. So 2 more juicy cities founded for a total of 6 already ! To be able to get such spots we had to declare war on Inca even after making him believe our eternal friendship on a decleration. Erdogan fear no consequences ! (and i was maybe lucky i didn't meet other civilizations). I captured 2 incan settlers guarded by slingers.... worst unit ever to guard a civilian unit cuz it automatically retreat leaving the civilian behind to our mercy ! So more workers for "farm-alization" and above all a large slow down for my only neighboor !
As you can see on the 6th city i grab another natural wonder :
Spoiler :


The war against Inca rapidly ended due to the intervention of Shaka from Zulus who gave me 30 gold per turn to make peace. I did'nt attend to attack Inca (i sjut wanted to slow them down) so it's definitely worth it, and the amount his huge its simply doubling my net income !

And on top of mines which gave us a lot of production we could get as belief by founding our religion second the cathedrals.... and now cathedrals give +1 :c5production: and +1 :c5gold: per farm, and because I'm Erdogan the kind I'll remember you that fact, i was before that building farms everywhere to don't starve, so this belief was sooooooo powerful in this context, all hail Zeus our God !

Let's end our expansion with one last city for the moment. Keep in mind with 7 cities this early in the game i never drop off negative hapines (due to my beloved pantheon). Who said Erdogan the great couldn't make his people happy ?

My caravans are send into internal trade or to city states north from me, because i have no neighboor !
Spoiler :


Let's start our first golden age (in term of gameplay and it was really a great period for our empire). Never unhappy, tons of gold thanks to Shaka, so we can keep buying land for our cities. We keep growing, and look now at our happiness, religion enhanced give us tons of happiness because we could convert the inca Empire and firstly 3 cities states to our dogma (+1 :c5happy: per 6 followers in foreign cities and missionaries less expansive). Meanwhile we start our second branch of policies, Statecraft after progress. We are now allied we 3 cities state and caravans now give us plenty of gold from trade with them, and our influence doesn't decade (+1 influence per turn for city state with trade route offset natural loss). We could even build the great colosseus (another statue for the glory of Zeus of course) by rushing down the tech tree : so another free trade route ! Petra's revenge !
Spoiler :


But our greatnes provokes the jealousy of bad people and now Darius from Persia declared us the war...


[To be continued, i will surely edit my post]
 
Great read so far.

Personally I gave the Ottomans three tries this week, 2 of them running the standard semi-aggressive style with loads of external trade-routes and capturing cities with wonders that I want. Over the course of these two games I managed to get the UA to trigger a grand total of 5 times, trade-route duration seems to have increased dramatically recently, and I was repeatedly getting 55+ turn trade-routes, which of course are completely impossible to defend. Routes I sent to city-states usually got plundered by barbarian invasions starting (I don't think there was a single CS on the map that didn't have at least one barbarian horde event every 55 turns. TRs sent to neighbors usually eventually got plundered by barbarians spawning from events of their choosing or by them giving open borders to my enemies, also lost a whole bunch of TRs to cities getting captures.

The other game I decided to isolate myself, went tradition set up a 5 city empire and on purpose only use internal TRs all game, I don't think I lost a single TR this game, but running only internal trade-routes severely crippled my empire and the rewards were pitiful, running a 55 turn trade-route to get half a turns worth(or even less) of culture/gold just felt extremely uninspiring.

I ended up winning 2 of these games, one normal game and the isolation game, but I definitely did not win them because of the Ottoman abilities, in my eye I was playing a vanilla civ with no uniques.




Anyways, for this new week we are moving on from the disaster of Turkey toward the grand success of the Russian Empire under president Putin, the great uniter. Sadly as Putin isn't present in this game for some weird unexplained reason (American propaganda), we are going to have to substitute him with Catherine the great(but not as great as Putin).
As we are of course completely incapable of making a country as great as the real Russia, the goal of this week is just to create a tribute empire, for the glory of Putin.
 
A new week, a new challenge.

This week we're going to try our hands at Korea, mostly because I haven't actually played a full game as them since they were changed last (random doesn't seem to like them for some reason). Anyways with Korea being Korea, I'm offering bonus-points for anyone running a non-standard (non-tradition) game. Have a nice week and I hope to hear about your exploits.
 
First try with korea ended in a ragequit.....

I played at king difficulty and perfectworld3 map, a giand landmass like pangäa in the mid. And i landed on a peninsula with the connction directly leading to the capital of the iroques. I could settle at acceptable positions on islands. I had the plan to head for every grow and farm buff i could get. but the islands were small and like fractal map continents making it useless to go for this. Atleast i was able to found my own religion and spread it to the iroquese and some city states while like every game a cancerous religion with "ritual" overrun nearly the whole continent.

The reason for the rage was the chance to settle on the last place on earth (checked with map after retire) by ONE turn vs the chinese and after my capital gets attacked by massive rebel troups (enemy spy agent) that nearly conquered my capital city. I was already really pissed of by this event system that lead to (when i retired) 27.... (TWENTY SEVEN!!!!) bad events in row..... loss in food, loss in money, mines destroyed, lumbermills destroyed, farms destroyed, loss in food, loss in money, loss in population....
 
played korean game.
Religion make me win. I went for every belief that give you yield for great person born/expand. And with korea spamming ability i had my 18th policy (for the ideology) iwhile in the meantime the most advanced civ had only 12 (i was playing on immortal).
I was a whoreWonderbuilder. 2 of them did the difference : the one for the reformation belief to buy every great people and get more yield for their expand and with Chichen Itza (+50% duration of golden age) a monopoly (+25% duration of GA + 10% with rationalism) and second tier of freedom (+50% duration again) even a lonely artist expand for a golden age give me 17 turns of golden age.... so perma golden age by the industrial era meaning +50% great person generation... Outch !

finally i won the game with tourism (tradition + aestethic + rationalism + freedom) but i was building the spaceship (3 or 4 parts already completed).
I was maybe a little lucky cuz Mongolia was in the game so none could won a diplomatic victory (the only thing where i was really in a bad situation !) and none was able to get strong enough to pretend a roll over everyone military speaking.

Fun game but no bonus point for me :'(

ah one more thing i could grab a city of siam really easily, because even if their unique unit isn't really good, their unique unit upgraded to canon really rocks !

So i could grab their city (who was build in my back so totally isolated from their empire) stand a little more time by hardly defending my borders (my army was not so strong, i was playing a peaceful game) and then i could make mongolia paying me a lot for going into peace with siam (BUG abused spotted ! i hope the new last version will fix that) because maybe i was winning the war because i took one of their city, but really not by far and i could be happy with a white peace. (i had my objectives completed, stealing one of their big juicy city and not losing ground elsewhere)
 
played korean game.
Religion make me win. I went for every belief that give you yield for great person born/expand. And with korea spamming ability i had my 18th policy (for the ideology) iwhile in the meantime the most advanced civ had only 12 (i was playing on immortal).
I was a whoreWonderbuilder. 2 of them did the difference : the one for the reformation belief to buy every great people and get more yield for their expand and with Chichen Itza (+50% duration of golden age) a monopoly (+25% duration of GA + 10% with rationalism) and second tier of freedom (+50% duration again) even a lonely artist expand for a golden age give me 17 turns of golden age.... so perma golden age by the industrial era meaning +50% great person generation... Outch !

finally i won the game with tourism (tradition + aestethic + rationalism + freedom) but i was building the spaceship (3 or 4 parts already completed).
I was maybe a little lucky cuz Mongolia was in the game so none could won a diplomatic victory (the only thing where i was really in a bad situation !) and none was able to get strong enough to pretend a roll over everyone military speaking.

Fun game but no bonus point for me :'(

ah one more thing i could grab a city of siam really easily, because even if their unique unit isn't really good, their unique unit upgraded to canon really rocks !

So i could grab their city (who was build in my back so totally isolated from their empire) stand a little more time by hardly defending my borders (my army was not so strong, i was playing a peaceful game) and then i could make mongolia paying me a lot for going into peace with siam (BUG abused spotted ! i hope the new last version will fix that) because maybe i was winning the war because i took one of their city, but really not by far and i could be happy with a white peace. (i had my objectives completed, stealing one of their big juicy city and not losing ground elsewhere)

Sounds like quite the game. Well played ^^.


I just realized that apparently I managed to delete my post for this weeks civ instead of actually posting it, so here it is again.

This week we bring it back to the Americas with the Shoshone.
The Shoshone is all about snowballing an early game advantage with help of their defensive bonuses as well as their unique feelgood improvement. As you might guess, the Shoshone doesn't really do farming very well, you want your encampment on every available slot which means getting adjacency-bonuses for your remaining tiles is a lot harder and probably not worth it. This isn't all bad however, it encourages Villages and Lumbermills, tiles that are normally not used that much because they break adjacency, but as most people know they are really yield-heavy.

As for general strategy, the Shoshone can get away with pretty much any start, their unique improvement can be built on any land-tile that isn't a hill (or a mountain/oasis/NW I guess), meaning that desert, tundra all all that is no problem at all. In fact, because of how resources in the tundra works, you almost prefer the tundra start, biggest drawback of the tundra in the first place is that you can't farm it.

The Shoshone have no problem doing a tradition-start, but their kit clearly isn't geared towards it. Those extra tiles are worth far less when you have god-like border-growth anyways, and generally you want to expand quickly and aggressively. For that, you can either go Progress or Authority.
The idea behind the Progress start is that you use the defensive bonuses of the Shoshone UA and UI to counteract the inherent defensive weakness of progress, where you spread yourself too thin and risk getting run over before you get your warmachine rolling. You can expand pretty aggressively, because of the extra tiles from newly planted cities the enemy usually have to walk a few turns before they reach your city after war is declared, giving you time to gather up defenses.

The idea behind the Authority start is using your defensive nature to bully the hell out of your neighbors, you forward-settle the crap out of them, and if they spread their cities out slightly too much you settle a city between them and isolate their satellites. Your forward-settling along with your extra land-grab usually means you can set up your catapults in attacking position before declaring war.
Alternatively you could just be extremely rude to all your neighbors and wait for them to DoW you, leading them into the meatgrinder that is your defense and gaining a whole lot of culture and science from their destroyed units.
 
Civ Used- Korea
Total number of civs in game- 8
Difficulty- Emperor, standard speed
Map type- Commutatis Terra, standard size, medium sea level, abundant resources
Version- 8.18, no random events, no vassals
Result - Science victory turn 330

/ I had a great starting location with a monopoly on jade (+3 culture), so I had a strong culture game. Followed Mr. J's nationalist strategy, building 5 cities, with Stonehenge, Pyramids, Mausoleum of Halicarnisus, and Hanging Gardens. India was in the game due to a pantheon founded on turn 1, so I didn't plan on spreading my religion which was: God of All Creation (8 culture + 8 happy), Mastery, the founder belief that gives +20% during golden ages, and later Churches, Evangelism and Glory of God. My policies were tradition into aesthetics into rationalism and freedom.

/ First war was with Venice where I stole a worker. Unlike the base game where the AI would give white peace in a few turns, Venice tried to attack my city (defense value 5). Luckily, my scout had upgraded to archer and my starting warrior were in the area to beat off the attack and only then was peace agreed, followed shortly by DoF. There were no other wars until turn 200 when India declared war on Denmark and Indonesia, but it was a phony war as they lacked a border.

I was slightly behind in tech until I started sending missionaries to gain science by spreading religion to nearby Hindu cities. I went from 6 techs behind to 6 ahead. Got artillery and declared war on Venice. This triggered war with William, but he was far away across a small sea, so no worries. I captured Venice acquiring a whale monopoly (+10% science). I then liberated all the city-states that Venice had acquired. A funny moment happened on the 1st liberated city state--the popup where it said all civs would be very grateful if I liberated the city-state. All civs were very grateful including Venice!

/ Byblos was the last city-state to be liberated and it was across the small sea next to William. So, as long as my army was there, I marched on Amsterdam not to far away. I killed a lot of units and finally took the capital. William had a lot of crossbows and 1 wounded melee unit in the area, so I think he could've recaptured his capital, but he retreated instead. I then had a small window of opportunity to fortify Amsterdam by making a citadel. But I didn't do that, and furthermore did not have much in the way of melee units, being used to the base game where you take a city with range and 1 melee unit. I suspected Harold might attack me since he was the odd man out, no DoF's with anyone and everyone else was friends with everyone except Harold and Shaka. A few turns later he did declare war and I held out for about 5 turns killing dozens of fusiliers with my Hwacha upgraded to Artillery, but the swarm was relentless and I retreated in good order to Byblos. I still had to contend with William all this time as well. When I started bombarding Rotterdam, from the safety of the sea and friend Byblos, he sued for peace.

/ I also forgot to mention that Shaka declared war at the same time as Harold. Shaka was my immediate neighbor to the west, so I had to fight on several fronts. The border with Shaka was mostly mountain and only 2 narrow passes, so I was able to fight to a draw there. More troublesome was best friend Gandhi allowing open borders for my enemies to attack me from that direction as well. After many turns I went on the offensive against Shaka, but the terrain was very difficult and just as I was about to capture a city I did not really want Shaka sued for a white peace and I agreed. He offered DoF shortly thereafter.

/ Against Harold, I built up my army of infantry, special forces, artillery, bombers and battleships and marched on Amsterdam a second time, and recaptured it and properly fortifying it, never had a problem defeating wave after wave of Harold's units. But the war with Harold dragged on until the very end of the game. He offered peace twice, but I couldn't accept it because the deal was always “impossible”. From there, science was very fast and I built the spaceship on turn 330. I made a lot of mistakes, for example, I didn't know you had to wait 5 turns before faith buying another GP, so I left a lot of faith on the table.

/ One peculiar thing happened building the UN wonder. I got 2 great diplomats: 1 in Seoul and 1 in Venice, also had a few military city-state gifts show up next to Venice and Venice had all 13 uranium, so when I built a nuclear plant in Seoul, I got a message that I was short on uranium and building maintenance was 2% more. The problem went away, when I hooked up 2 more uranium near Amsterdam.

A very fun game and I still haven't watched the Civ6 videos about India!
 
Civ Used- Shoshone
Total number of civs in game- 8
Difficulty- Emperor, standard speed
Map type- Commutatis Terra, standard size, medium sea level
Version- 9.2, no random events, no vassals
Result - Science victory, Culture victory (tie) turn 398

Went progress-->aesthetics-->rationalism-->freedom.
Took out neighbor Brazil turn 55ish, but missed out on religion because of that. Then it was a long period of peace, built 5 more cities and annexed a City-state after it fell to a barbarian horde, so total of 8 cities. Mongolia attacked me around turn 200, but was able to beat it off, but could not take any Mongolian cities. Babylon was another close neighbor that was hostile most of the game; assembled an attack force, but I had a massive gold reserve to upgrade my units from the Mongolian war and it never attacked. I did not intentionally try to win by culture and science on the same turn, but it just worked out that way. Establishing franchises for my corporation seemed to go much easier compared to the 8-18 version, because trade routes did not take forever to complete. Railroads cost me 3 gold per turn to maintain instead of the advertised 2 gold per turn.
 
I've tried Shoshone twice at King, Progress and Authority. There's something I'm not doing well. I should declare war and wait in my territory, but I just cannot wait, so I end losing too many units. Maybe in next play.

It's kinda different, normally you only DoW if you can quickly shell down a city and grab it.
 
Ended up not finishing a Shoshone game, a lot of sidework and world of warcraft got in the way. Started around 15 games and found around 12 ancient ruins between them so I lost interest quickly, especially considering I went for 3 pathfinder starts every game.
Anyways this isn't as much a problem with the Shoshone design as it is an issue with my bad luck.


For this next weeks challenge we are going to take a crack at Songhai and see if they are still the top-tier civ they were a few months ago.
 
By 'popular' demand we are apparently bringing this back for a week, until people stop caring again :D.


So this week I figured we'd take a crack at the recreating the greatest empire in the history of humanity (no that's not you Washington), the British empire. Sadly enough they're not exactly in the game, so we'll just have to settle for England.
England is led by Elizabeth, a queen famous for not being as crazy as her father or her sister, and also for one of the greatest military victories of that era (which she probably had very little to do with).

In game England is a strong naval power with some spying power thrown in for good measure. They are also the only civ in the game that can afford to use post-renaissance melee-ships, as their unique factory does not consume any coal. They also possess a unique ship that was recently buffed and I'm kinda interested to see how it turns out.

England is a civ that mainly comes online during the late renaissance era, but they have some ways of dealing with the early game. For example you can use your free instant spy to keep control of a city-state of your choice at pretty much no real cost, depending on the type of city-state this can net you a bunch of benefits. The spy can also be used to harass a neighbor, stealing and sabotaging his stuff so he will be easier to conquer.


Anyways my experience with England is kinda limited, so I'm kinda curious to see how you handle the civ, happy hunting and may God save the queen.
 
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