Challenge-XVI-08

[enKage]

Lazybones, you can also try Pernament Alliances, and it should be a game not so time-consuming especially with OCC selected.

OTOH I would not wait till rifles. Jannissaries are really powerfull. C2 janissary win with longbow on flat land city and should not have a counter until cavalry/cannon/grenadiers

 

[elitetroops]

If rifling is the goal, then I'd take Suleiman for PHI and more bulbing. But you should not forget Janissaries. They are not quite rifles, but they are still very strong against medieval units. With Suleiman you can bulb your way to education and get gunpowder very early.

For peaceful rexing you have to be a bit lucky with the map. Pressed shoreline can give oddly shaped maps with lots of chokepoints and good possibilities to grab a lot of land. I even had one small pressed shoreline pangaea where my second city could block land for 5 more cities to be founded later, giving me 7 cities while the AI averaged about 6 cities each. Choose flat worldwrap and it doesn't cost you so much, even if you have to found second city far away to block off an opponent.

 

[Lazybones]

Sorry for the late reply I've been away for a bit.

The OCC/PA idea seems promising I tried one time and did better than I expected. Made some mistakes eg bad tech trades that made me lose the lib race and didn't know I needed a defensive pact for ages before getting the PA. I could also only get the PA with the weakest AI (Churchhill) so that didn't help and both of my neighbours went for culture victories so I had almost no land by the time the PA kicked in. It's funny how much deity can kick your butt if things don't go your way.

I'll try Suleiman with Janissaries and pressed shoreline a bit later, thanks for the tips.

 

[pandamancer]

Never tried deity, so I tried this one just for fun.

Man, deity is really hard as advertised! Got boxed in early with no horses, no phants but have a strong commerce start. I went for gunpowder for Jannisaries but by the time I got them the AIs got knights. I managed to took 2 of his cities but his knight sniped my core cities away from fog of war. ragequit as a result

 

[elitetroops]

Don't give up quite yet, at least try a strong commerce start with elephants. I think elephants is the easiest if you can get them early enough. At least they worked very well for me, despite missing the oracle and only having 2 cities before the break out.

For Jannisaries, I think I'd recommend to get up a few libraries and run scientists asap, oracle theo, then bulb paper+edu. With Suleiman it should be very possible to get BC Gunpowder this way. The good thing with taking this path is that all techs will be monopoly techs. You can trade theo to everyone else for stuff like currency, construction, calendar and monarchy. With a few turns invested into the techs, paper can later give you stuff like machinery, civil service or feudalism, and you still have edu left to trade for engineering. Or maybe even better, trade something for Philo, then bulb liberalism and take nationalism for drafting. So basically there is not much need to tech anything other than what is required to oracle theo and later gunpowder. Of course, you can also beat someone down to one city and take some of those techs for peace.

 

[Seraiel]

If you go Elepult, 4 cities is optimal. You need to delay most buildings and even Workers 'til after having grabbed the land on Deity. You can do with 1 Worker, just improve 3 or 4 tiles of the capital, then move to the next city, improve 2 tiles, next city etc. If you get boxed in too early and don't have enough cities, Deity becomes very very hard, especially the early rushes. As you're new, I'd recommend the strategy elitetroops mentioned and the easiest strategy of all is Draft Rifles, maybe also Cannons.

[EDIT]

Looked at map-settings and victory type:

If you play a micro Pangaea, plan for two cities at most.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

This challenge is pretty tough. At first, I tried a Chariot rush and managed to capture, lose, recapture, and hold an AI's only source of metals, but eventually that AI got another source in trade from one of the other AIs for a Clam Resource. I had a couple of Axemen, but I lost my army of Chariots and it was already pretty late in the game.

I tried again with an Ivory start and managed to squeeze in 4 tightly-pressed Cities. I traded for many techs, had a decently-looking start, but kept having 1 City's production repeatedly sabotaged. No matter, I just had to wait for War Elephants. Hmmm, except that once Monarchy got learned, one AI decided to declare war on me and then a series of chain bribes had me fighting 4 AIs. 4 declarations of war all in a row! With 3 Warriors to my name (it should have been 4 or 5 Warriors, except for my Hammers being Sabotaged repeatedly), and with my opponents being adjacent to my Cities' Cultural Borders, it was immediately game over.

It's definitely going to take some luck (and maybe better opponent choices) to get through to the stage where one can pump out War Elephants.