Civ Stories Go Here!

[Horvath Broncos]

I wonder if the AI keeps improving, it should lose some difficulty bonus yields, just to keep the game beatable.

I don't think so. I think immortal is very beatable and Deity is Deity as in it should be as hard as possible. I don't know about lower difficulties though.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

As it is, I am very confident that I can win Domination victory on deity.

I am also quite confident that I cannot win a pure peaceful victory. The problem is, even if I can keep up with most of the civs, all it takes is one runaway to lose. And in my last games there was always a ruanway. Interestingly, it's always during the Renaissance when one civ goes off. I'm not sure what's going on, but all of a sudden they are 10+ techs ahead and ride that easily to victory.

 

[tu_79]

Ah, but I said if it keeps improving. Right now you are still able to beat the game, but what could happen if the AI keeps getting better.

 

[Horvath Broncos]

Ah, but I said if it keeps improving. Right now you are still able to beat the game, but what could happen if the AI keeps getting better.

Well I think it would take significant amount of improving to consider immortal atleast too hard. I mean it should be very hard and in times it is. But with good civ and/or good start I can beat the game rather easily and I am not even that good civ player and you can win on any winning condition so in a way I think could be a bit harder. Because the jump from immortal to diety is absolutely huge. I wish there would be a immortal+ or something because I win at immortal most of the time and sometimes it is very easy and in diety I suck balls every single time. This ofcourse is just my opinion.

 

[tu_79]

Settings: Vox Populi 9-18, Polynesia, Tectonics, No Events, King

Diplomatic Victory on turn 385.

It has been fun at the beginning. I explored the map quite early, settled 3 cities. Denmark in my small northern continent, but he wasn't aggressive as I was expanding to other coasts. I spotted some good places to set moais together in a small continent near equator with 3 nearby city states and a little bigger continent to the south, completely uninhabited.

I tried with God of the Sea before without luck, but this time I chosed Goddess of Fertility, avoided rivers and was the second to a religion, with Holy Law founder belief and Churches. With one church and some missionaries, I managed to completely convert Persia and Denmark. Ottoman was contested between my religion and Austria's, but ultimately I lost Ottoman.

My Progress was quite slow, but since I chosed Progress, I expected it to improve once some more cities were on the go. And since my religion was progressing well, I continued to Faith. I could build some extra Wonders, thanks to Holy Law and extra culture from moais.

Brazil and Celts were found, WC began, and luckly my religious authority let me stand well, and since I was settled near 5 CS I wasn't afraid of diplomacy. So I reformed into Pacifism, to happily expand into more cities. Then, I made the mistake to continue to Imperialism (to get more from sea tiles, which I had aplenty, and move faster between my settled continents, that were quite apart), while trying to win culturally. Moais clusters were starting to give some real culture (see my screenshots in Polynesia thread) and I thought culture victory would be easy.

There were some skirmishes between Ottoman and Austria, and then between Brazil and Celts, but no one managed to conquer a city. My happiness started to skyrocket and I went crazy settling the rest of the map, nice spots or not, and when I saw other civs sending settlers to my nearby tiny islands, I settled there too. 22 cities. When I started sending manually Archeologists, I needed like 15 minutes per turn.

CS alliance was a constant fight. Specially Ottomans were continually trying to take my allies. Austria did her 'marriage' thing, what cannot be denied with 'Decolonization' as I bitterly learned after passing that enact against Austria. But being so close to so many CS, I had the upper hand at keeping my allies. Ottoman dominated WC for a while, then I could set a Sphere of Infuence in one Ottoman ally, and Austria rised to dominance till the very end.

I had to change my Order Ideology into Autocracy, cause Austria was too difficult to influence and she had taken Autocracy and resisted the little unhappiness she got from me and Ottoman's Freedom. When Ottoman changed to Autocracy, I knew. The 2 turns of anarchy took me in the middle of the Olympic Village Project, but having so many working cities, I could win the gold prize.

Brazil conquered Celts, but even Brazil was irrelevant. The fight was between Austria (diplomacy), Ottoman (science) and Polynesia (cultural). And since I passed Spaceship regulations, Ottoman had a harder time.

I was constantly pushing for cultural victory, went back to complete Aesthetics and be able to faith purchase Musicians. My army was the worst at every single turn, and no one threatened to attack me (I had gold and hammers enough to build it in no time and a good layer of ocean in between anyway).
But Austria was pushing for a diplomatic Victory herself, passed World Ideology, and United Nations. So I had to compete hardly on that, and put every city to get the UN golden prize. Ten turns later I wasn't able to finish cultural influence on Austria, but had enough votes and it had been a long enough game.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Civ Used: Portugal
Total number of civs in game: 12
Difficulty: Immortal
Map type: Tilted axis
Map size: Huge
Speed: Marathon
Outcome: Scientific Victory

So it seems Immortal is my comfort level. Fair enough.
The deal with this game was to use a crappy mapscript (tilted axis is actually playing two sizes smaller as half of the map is arctic and the rest is usually quite bad too) and use a civ that has a non-teerrain related bonus (in this case Portugals science from trade) to take advantage of it.
As it turned out, it kinda worked against me. My start was quite good though, I got an easy religion (from spirit of the desert - that never fails) and got Petra and Colossus for additional trade routes. However, I was on an isolated island where I could put 6 cities down. My ships were able to hop a gap to explore, but I could not ferry units across. That was awfull, because I had two neighbours that did not found, but could only convert one of them. I got just enough followers to reform, but not enough to really profit. Also, no coal at all.
Anyway, I was gunning for a cultural victory, and was going along nicely, generating lots of art and securing most of the mid game cultural wonders (and theming them).
Meanwhile, the Incas and to a lesser extend Venice were totally dominating their continents. Not willing to look at a runaway AI again, I assembled a naval strike force to cut them back to size. However, I only had 6 iron on my blasted island, so I lacked the numbers of ranged ships. I couldn's gain anything on the Inca mainland, as they would replace their units quicker than I could kill them. In the end, I just liberated a bunch of CS and Germany. It was no resounding success, but he did lose cities, and more importantly spent like 100 turns building units that would just die. Also he suffered terrible war weariness.
In the endgame, it was aeven race between me (Cultural or science, i was teching very well) Venice (Science) and Inca (Diplo). The Incas were out first, since so many CS were conquered that he didn't reach the required amount (dspite having several 1000 influence on some...).
My cultural attempt came just short, as both Venice and the Inca had tredemous culture, and spending my Musicians on both meant I overcame none. Also my weak diplomatic influence meant that the passport system I sneaked through was repealed and in the end even travel regulations were in place. Withouth that, who knows.
So the race was for the stars between me and Venice, which venice wone by 12 or such turns. However, he did not buy a single part, despite being in freedom. The only major blunder of the AI in an otherwise impressive game. And if I hadn't bought that last Musician of which I in principle knew it wouldn't get me there and spent the faith on two Scientists instead, I would have been first anyway.
Anyway, enjoyable game, and stealing art is the best ever!

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Civ Used: Byzanz
Total number of civs in game: 12
Difficulty: Immortal
Map type: Frontier
Map size: Huge
Speed: Marathon
Outcome: Cultural Victory

This was almost a demo game for the Sacred Sites Victory.
I was favored that I spawned in nice terrain, while my next neighbours all spawned in the middle of a gigantic jungle, which hurt their start. Even more lucky, of 6 civs on my continent, I was the only one to found. So it only took one GP tour to spread my religion to 5 civs.
I went on a city founding spree and settled 13 cities, and then 17 more on another empty continent that happend to be nearby (due to science and culture from followers in foreign cities I was leading in tech despite my city spam).
That's 30 cities, each with the full set of 4 faith buildings, one of them Stupas. Thats (4x3+4)x30=480 tourism, +60 from Arenas. Over 500 tourism at the end of the Rennaisance does the trick. I was then a bit careless with my multipliers (forgot diplomats for a while) so it took a couple of GMs and lasted untill early Atomic, but in the end it was never in doubt.

 

[thunderbird_14]

Civ Used: Arabia
Total number of civs in game: 15
Difficulty: Prince
Map Type: Tectonic, High Sea Level (Really genuinely happy that there was more sea here than was at Communistas)
Map Size: Huge
Speed: Standard
Outcome: Pending

General Comment: Really Enjoyable!
Modmods: Civic and Reform, CBO E&D, VP Nubia, VP Vietnam, VP Olmecs, CE

Spoiler :

Now to begin, I started in a fairly large island by myself, deserts were vast and luckily my capital has 8 floodplains nearby. Soon after, met Bogota on the island, and Polynesia found me (he was on the western island). Chose Spirit of the Desert, some civics and got lucky to wonderwhore. Destroyed Polynesia's religion. Get more wonders. Blazed through policies and techs. And managed to be the top dog at the score list. Met the other continents, traded a lot. And even if America is vying for Diplomatic, I managed to have more votes than him and culturally influenced all but 3 civs just by popping more great people.

Other details were fuzzy, but it was fun. Maybe I'll come back to finish the game next week (and maybe Polynesia will wage war). Also, the map was pretty

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Civ Used: Inca
Total number of civs in game: 12
Difficulty: Immortal
Map type: Highlands
Map size: Huge
Speed: Marathon
Outcome: Science Victory

I could write a detailled report, but actually it is sufficient to say that I played Incas on Highlands and that was that.

Civ Used: India
Total number of civs in game: 12
Difficulty: Immortal
Map type: Ice Age
Map size: Huge
Speed: Marathon
Outcome: Cultural Victory

Also a rigged set-up, albeit less so than the one before. Being India I could pick the tundra pantheon turn 1, and had the nuts capitol (size 60 in the end). Despite being very well on course for my intended diplo victory (80 votes and 30 turns ledt to go) I accidentially stubled into a culture victory. Oh well.

Civ Used: Huns
Total number of civs in game: 12
Difficulty: Immortal
Map type: Random (Pangea)
Map size: Huge
Speed: Marathon
Outcome: Conquest Victory

Not too much strategy required - I just swarmed the poor AIs with units. Having raging barbs selected (I always do) I had a neverending stream of units. The only miltitary units I build were an initial archer or two, two emergency mercenaries, a couple of cannons and a few caravels for explorations. All the rest were... volunteers.

 

[thunderbird_14]

Finally, finished one game until the end (Yay, Semestral Breaks!)

Civ Used: Indonesia
Total Number of Civs: 14
Difficulty: Warlord
Map Type: Tectonic
Map Size: Huge
Speed: Standard
Settings: Chill Barbarians, Complete Kills
Modmods: Same as before

Spoiler The Journey :

So, I wanted to try Liberty after a series of Traditional Arabias. Managed to have 4 core cities, forward settled Spain (which I didn't explored yet), had a brief grinding war with her until I stole territory to gain the upper hand and after that, I got 2 cities and the capital under siege , well until the peae treaty came up. I think that's where I started to snowball, got a religion, the modmods are nice, and got a lot of Monopolies (the war was actually great in that I managed to stole a monopoly from Spain). World Congress happened and until the end, it was really amazing to have all sides exploit it but they can't touch me . Wonderwhored and got to snowball hard, outteched even an agressive Babylon and finished the entire Freedom tenets before Ethiopia even managed to finish 5 Autocracy tenets

So in the end

Spoiler Wakas :( :

I was top of the world, had the most advanced army (reached Future tech thrice) while the rest of the world wasn't in the information era. My tourism was up the roof even if there was a resolution against it. But there were WARS EVERYWHERE. And before the critical Musician tour on one civ, Isabella declared war on me and though I just hesitated on conquering her (I just damaged her last 3 cities to the minimum including Madrid, and captured another after a few turns of no avail of peace), I kicked her out of the continent but she's still alive. I've always wanted to be friends with her since she was the only one honest in the entire game . Anyway, cultural victory was reached, built the 6 parts for space, and had 72 votes. No.1 on all stats and kept founding cities. Also, the game made me feel good that I can actually manage a war and watch a full-grown diplomacy tension around the world (even if they're all freedom, albeit Ethiopia)

Now it was fun (only complaint was that even if I had settled hard, iron was scarce on the continent, supporting only 2 Kris Swordmen and when I finally secured some decent amount, they became obsolete ) and tonight, I'm just imagining some lore around that fictional place instead of doing something productive , might move on to Prince next time but I want to test a Sukhottai game next .

 

[tu_79]

Finally, finished one game until the end (Yay, Semestral Breaks!)

Civ Used: Indonesia
Total Number of Civs: 14
Difficulty: Warlord
Map Type: Tectonic
Map Size: Huge
Speed: Standard
Settings: Chill Barbarians, Complete Kills
Modmods: Same as before

Spoiler The Journey :

So, I wanted to try Liberty after a series of Traditional Arabias. Managed to have 4 core cities, forward settled Spain (which I didn't explored yet), had a brief grinding war with her until I stole territory to gain the upper hand and after that, I got 2 cities and the capital under siege , well until the peae treaty came up. I think that's where I started to snowball, got a religion, the modmods are nice, and got a lot of Monopolies (the war was actually great in that I managed to stole a monopoly from Spain). World Congress happened and until the end, it was really amazing to have all sides exploit it but they can't touch me . Wonderwhored and got to snowball hard, outteched even an agressive Babylon and finished the entire Freedom tenets before Ethiopia even managed to finish 5 Autocracy tenets

So in the end

Spoiler Wakas :( :

I was top of the world, had the most advanced army (reached Future tech thrice) while the rest of the world wasn't in the information era. My tourism was up the roof even if there was a resolution against it. But there were WARS EVERYWHERE. And before the critical Musician tour on one civ, Isabella declared war on me and though I just hesitated on conquering her (I just damaged her last 3 cities to the minimum including Madrid, and captured another after a few turns of no avail of peace), I kicked her out of the continent but she's still alive. I've always wanted to be friends with her since she was the only one honest in the entire game . Anyway, cultural victory was reached, built the 6 parts for space, and had 72 votes. No.1 on all stats and kept founding cities. Also, the game made me feel good that I can actually manage a war and watch a full-grown diplomacy tension around the world (even if they're all freedom, albeit Ethiopia)

Now it was fun (only complaint was that even if I had settled hard, iron was scarce on the continent, supporting only 2 Kris Swordmen and when I finally secured some decent amount, they became obsolete ) and tonight, I'm just imagining some lore around that fictional place instead of doing something productive , might move on to Prince next time but I want to test a Sukhottai game next .

Seeing how easily you won, I'd say you're ready to move on to Prince, too. Simple rule: win a game, try a harder game, lose twice, try lowering the difficulty.

 

[thunderbird_14]

Thanks for the tip , but I guess I was just lucky on the mapscript, if I've bordered another civ, there's the possibility I've lost.

 

[8bitBob]

Civ Used- Iroquois
Total number of civs in game- 8
Difficulty- Emperor
Map type- Pangaea
Version- Latest as of post

So I just had an amusing game. Long story short, I was able to settle 8 cities in a mostly forested area as the Iroquois and got my hands on Goddess of Renewal. Needless to say, I rushed Longhouse and had a very strong start.

Because I didn't want to chop trees for obvious reasons, I didn't take Cathedrals despite having the option. Holy Law was gone (as always) so I decided to just go for the Apostolic Traditions/Churches/Evangelism combo. At first, the yields were simply incredible. I was sending up to six missionaries into other lands and popping all of them for 3000 beakers a piece. Combined with Universities in a mostly forested homeland, I shot up in techs so fast that I was 5 techs ahead of Babylon and Korea. Unfortunately, I was too successful in my zealotry and accidentally converted the entire world. Turns out that there wasn't any heavy Religion focused Civs in this game. Whoops.

I went Industry for the sexy Hammers on Lumbermills, seeing as that was most of my tile improvements. I had intended to follow this up with Order for truly absurd Hammers, but it was becoming apparent that Augustus was going to run away with this game if I didn't do something to stop him. At this point, my main advantage against him was a considerable lead in techs, so I beelined for Oil reveal so I could start improving them... only to find I had not a drop of Oil in all my lands. Not one to be discouraged by a complete lack of natural resources, I resigned myself to going Autocracy and massing enough Zeros to blot out the sun.

Unfortunately, this meant I needed to get all the way to Tier 3 Ideology before I could even begin production. Fortunately, I had such an absurd amount of hammers that every city had already built everything, so I set them all to Culture production and doubled my Policy acquisition rate while working towards Radar. Augustus and Bismark started rattling sabres at me during this time, but I made some favorable trades to keep any blades from coming out.

Finally, it was roughly 1905 and I had all the pieces in place. I set every city to build 3 Zeros and then bought 2 in every city. Seven turns later, I was the most powerful leader in the world. I actually went over my unit cap instantly and had to delete all non essential personnel.

Augustus never stood a chance. Every Zero started with Air Repair, quickly acquired Sortie and eventually learned Range. Every turn a fresh wave of fresh recruits would come pouring out of his lands, and every turn I would hammer them into dust with high explosives. The once strongest leader in the world was bombed into irrelevance in a matter of years.

But, as we all know, success breeds haters. Despite the fact that Augustus had just been curb stomping the whole world, everyone seemed to take offense to him losing 75% of his cities. Whoops. I managed to placate almost everyone, but Bismark, my closest neighbour and long time ally, wasn't having any of it. Oh well. His lands were rich in Oil, and I wanted tanks anyway.

By this point, I had a fleet of 70 Zeros and honestly wondered what he was thinking... until he dropped The Bomb. He couldn't reach my capitol, but he still all but ruined one of my best cities.

My retribution was as swift as it was complete. My armies scourged the name of Germany from the land so completely that they barely warranted a footnote in the annals of history.


Unfortunately, that's where the story ends. I was getting a lot of crashes and I felt my victory was all but assured, so I stopped playing. Converting the entire world to my religion, combined with One World, One Religion let me dominate the WC from its inception. After Germany mysteriously disappeared and I gobbled up all his CS allies, a Diplomatic Victory was a forgone conclusion.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Nicely played and reported, 8bitBob.

Civ Used: England
Total number of civs in game: 12
Difficulty: Immortal
Map type: Random (Continents)
Map size: Huge
Speed: Marathon
Outcome: Loss

I had a very small starting location, limited either by sea or a large desert. The correct play would probably have been to go tredition and somehow make do with just a few cities. Instead I reached out, andfounded far too much cities far too far away. Consequently, I was hit with eternal unhappiness and negative income due to far too long roads. Fortunately, Napoleon put me out of my misery.

Civ Used: Songhai
Total number of civs in game: 12
Difficulty: Immortal
Map type: Random (Continents)
Map size: Huge
Speed: Marathon
Outcome: Science Victory

I used the money from early barb camps to rush 4 archers. Those were enough to conquer the other 4 captials on my continent befor turn 150 (I was lucky, the continent was very forested, but all captials could be reached by archers). Then I proceeded to fill it up before other civs could send settlers across. This led to a long period of unhappiness, but it just worked out. The rest of the game I was peaceful, just teching up. Portugal declared at me near the end. It was not very dangerous, mostly turkey shooting, but in spite of me losing 1 or 2 units and killing dozends, I was punished by 100 unhappiness from war weariness. However, I was already building my parts it was inconsequential.

 

[Galbias]

Civ Used: Germany
Total Number of Civs: 8
Difficulty: Emperor
Map Type: Pangea
Map Size: Standard
Speed: Standard
Settings: defaults + Transparent Diplomacy
Mods: Wonder race
Version: 10/24

Spoiler :

Started out with a really nice river + coastal capital and didn't have too much trouble with Barbarians. I also managed to grab Mt Kailash (I think? whichever one it is that gives only Faith) with my third city, which gave me enough Faith to found my religion before anyone else. After settling my 4th city and getting some of my infrastructure up (I managed Pyramids, which combined with Progress gave me super fast workers that could chop a forest in one turn, which I abused to boost my early production as much as possible), I found that I was basically in the corner of the map with my neighbors being Greece to the north, Russia to the northwest, and China to the west. Greece was thankfully mostly blocked off by mountains with a 1-tile pass and a city-state, which I made sure to get allied with. In a surprising move, Greece used a Great Diplomat to steal the City State and then attacked me through the mountain pass and city state territory. After fending him off, albeit with a bunch of pillaged tiles, he went for my other city bordering his territory, which I had luckily still kept some defense in. At this point, I noticed he had yet to build Walls in the city on his side of the mountain pass, and I had just unlocked Trebuchets, so I was able to take it without much trouble and then get an advantageous peace deal, I wasn't planning on doing too much warmongering in this game.

Meanwhile, I enhanced my religion with Cathedrals, the founder belief that boosts WLTKD, Inspiration, and Ritual, which I'd been wanting to try for awhile. Sadly, the war had prevented me from spreading my religion to Greece and Russia had taken advantage of that to spread their religion instead, but I was still able to spread it to China and Indonesia, which was enough to get me Reformed with One World, One Religion. I was also able to get a Salt monopoly which is probably the single best Luxury monopoly in the game and gave me enough growth to work a lot of specialist slots I wouldn't have otherwise been able to. Between that, working on CS alliances, and Hanses, my empire was doing great. Every single other civ except China ended up going to at least one war, and there was no real snowball AI, I was able to grab a lot of wonders with the only real competition being Poland. With One World, One Religion I was also able to build up a large army of missionaries and carpet bomb Poland and Greece with them, giving them my religion instead. Thanks to Ritual, Russia eventually got overwhelmed by passive pressure and her original religion got wiped out as well.

Sadly, during one of the many wars, Indonesia took Persia's holy city, bought 3 great prophets, and then removed my religion (and then promptly lost said holy city to Russia). China also took advantage of mutual open borders in order to sneak a Settler to the very corner of the map, which I'd been planning to settle once Pioneers became available. Poland managed to beat me to an Ideology by a mere 5 turns and went for Autocracy, after which he ended our long friendship. China also went from DoF to denouncing for no clear reason, though I was able to maintain DoF with Indonesia.

I also pulled what I've dubbed the Indiana Jones strategy, in which I rush Archaeology and build a bunch of Archaeologists, send them to someone who you can get Open Borders with but who doesn't like you, and activate them all at the same time (compensating for time it'll take to clear forest, or just ignoring those) and then promise to not steal anything else, giving you 2-5 artifacts for only a moderate diplomatic penalty.

At this point, I was looking to be coasting to a victory, but after conquering Greece and Persia, Russia decided I was next. I hadn't been slacking too much on army (my strength was ~3000 to Russia's ~8000) and I had two advantages in Russia having between 10-20 negative happiness and Himeji Castle (though the city being attacked didn't have enough territory for the latter to do much, unfortunately). She also got a good surround angle with Artillery via Open Borders with China and had a large number of Cossacks swarming in, and all of the terrain off the one road to the city was rough, meaning that I was steadily losing ground despite buying units every turn because I couldn't reinforce fast enough. The city got flipped several times with a lot of unit losses on both sides, though I kept it in the end. On the other side of the battle, I was actually able to take Athens, which was a nice plus (though it actually hurt me at the time, reducing Russia's unhappiness by a good chunk and giving her units the Resistance buff).

Despite taking one of her cities and reducing Russia's military score down to on par with mine, I somehow had -10 warscore, but she finally started talking peace after I got the 6 Foreign Legions from Freedom and was a couple turns away from Panzers, and I decided to accept. After that, I was just waiting for the victory to happen. I was originally going for Diplomatic victory and had something ridiculous like 50 WC votes to everyone else's 5-10 and had of course passed World Ideology, but I'd also picked up the lv 3 +Tourism tenant from Freedom and the Culture Victory came first (I was in Atomic era at the time, but I think most of the world was still in Modern or earlier which isn't enough for the Global Hegemony to trigger, I think? Not 100% sure). Ended up winning Culture Victory on turn 355, I think.

conclusions: Germany is great, Artifact stealing and Salt's monopoly bonus need a nerf, this post came out a lot longer than I was expecting

empire just before endgame:

 

[Galbias]

actually, gonna double post another one from an older version

Civ Used: Japan
Total Number of Civs: 8
Difficulty: Emperor
Map Type: Fractal
Map Size: Standard
Speed: Standard
Settings: defaults + Transparent Diplomacy
Mods: Wonder race
Version: 8/18

Spoiler :

I started out in a bit of an awkward position, with a large amount of forest/jungle to my northwest and a large desert to my east, neighbors were Rome to the east (past the desert, thankfully), Korea to the northeast, and Austria to the northwest. I had somewhat bad luck with Iron; Austria grabbed the city location I was eyeing that had 8 Iron, and I ended up having to settle my 4th city in an area with significant overlap to grab the only remaining source, which was only 2. I was also able to get the first religion and spread it aggressively. Austria and Korea both founded, unfortunately, but I was able to spread mine to Siam and France past them, as well as Rome. I decided to try Inspiration, Hero Worship, and Orders along with Zealotry (bad move).

Of course, Rome is Rome, and declared war on me before too long. This war was a lot easier than it should have been, because A) Rome had even worse luck with Iron and couldn't build a single Legion, and B) I had Ivory and was able to build War Elephants. Rome compensated for this with sheer numbers, and it was a long time before I was able to break the stalemate and start threatening any of his cities, which also took a long time to take because Rome had taken advantage of my religion to build Orders, giving him a lot of extra early city defense. The tide eventually turned, especially once I got my Samurai. Rome constantly refused peace, I accepted lucrative peace offers from some other AIs but he just declared war on me again until I had him down to a single city. He seemed to have been focusing his production on units because his cities were fairly underdeveloped, I ended up puppeting all of them, even his capital.

With my religion spread to 3 other AIs and Incas and Korea getting ahead in Culture/Science and hogging most of the Wonders (Incas in particular had ~10 very tall cities, and had apparently never been attacked by Songhai despite sharing a large border with them), I decided to aim for a Diplomatic victory, went Statecraft, instituted Shinto as the World Religion, reformed with Global Commandments, and started forging CS alliances. Korea and Austria had a defensive pact, so I decided to bide my time.

Finally, the Ideology choice came up, but Incas had already picked Freedom, and Korea had picked Autocracy, oddly. I picked Order (passing World Ideology without much trouble) and then attacked Korea, who had finally let the defensive pact expire. They still put up a fair amount of resistance, but couldn't stand up to my army of Riflemen with Samurai/Dojo promotions and Artillery (thankfully, I had Iron from a CS by this point) and I took their capital along with another nice city in a peace deal. Songhai, who was too far away to do anything and significantly behind in technology/culture, also declared war on me, presumably to try and conquer my nearby city state allies.

Austria and Incas were constantly causing problems in the WC for me at this point. I still had the most votes by a good margin, but almost all proposals were directly harmful to me, usually repealing my world religion/ideology (Austria went Autocracy) or one of my Spheres of Influence, and I had to spend my votes on shooting them down rather than getting anything new done. I was relieved to see Austria suggest United Nations and let it pass, only for Incas to beat me to the gold and hurt my diplomatic victory prospects even more. Songhai was stubbornly refusing peace and putting me into negative happiness via War Weariness (which iirc he didn't have to suffer because he still didn't have an ideology, though he was in negative happiness too). Finally, I realized far too late that Incas were about to get a cultural victory and I was about the only one in their way. I passed Travel Ban but ultimately decided to abandon the game, the Incan victory was only a matter of time, my happiness was going below -20 even with the Authority garrison bonus in every city, and I wasn't anywhere close to a victory myself.

 

[8bitBob]

So China, and to a lesser extent Tradition, is my new obsession. As such, I have been refining my Specialist strategy with repeated games on differing difficulties with the intent of making a guide. For now though, I thought it would be fun to share some stories of my tests.

The basic strategy is as such: found four cities and have way more dudes than everyone else. Pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Civ Used: China
Total number of civs in game: 8
Difficulty: Immortal
Map type: Pangaea
Map size: Standard
Speed: Standard
Outcome: Scientific Victory on turn 369

Spoiler :

This game was a struggle. I didn't have a huge amount of Immortal experience, so I was constantly getting one upped by the AI. Out of the six or so essential Wonders to my build I got maybe two of them, I lost all the decent settling spots seconds before I could arrive, I hit atomic age before finishing Rationalism, and, most absurdly, didn't even found a religion due to there being 3 Faith Civs and a runaway Netherlands.

My biggest mistake this game was rushing Writing. This worked fine on lower difficulties, but the lack of tree cutting cost me way too much early game production, not to mention the much later luxury connections. I still managed to get the Pyramids, but my Settlers came out far too slowly to find some good dirt to call home. This snowballed into less Faith and Culture due to later buildings, which cost me almost every other wonder and a religion, and even cost me some early warring due to opportunistic neighbours noticing my lack of Walls. I managed to hold on to my crappy cities by the skin of my teeth, but it was all quite the mess.

The rest of the game was essentially me playing from behind and buying off my neighbours to not come and stomp me into the ground. Because I don't compete for CS allies, this helped tension a bit, and I only had a couple more DoW despite making for a temptingly weak target. At one point, I was around eight techs behind the other Civs. This all changed when I finally beelined to Penicillin and my population exploded. On top of that, I was second to adopt Freedom, but the Netherlands had the wrong techs for the Ideology Wonder, so I got that too. By the end of the game, my capitol had 90 Population and my 3 other cities had around 60 each. For reference, the average AI capitol had around 40.

By the end of the game, I was 15 techs ahead of the next leading Civ. This was mostly accomplished by spending all of my Faith on GS and bulbing them after every Specialist slot had been filled. Because they pop for an amount based on your Science output, and every Specialist was giving me Science, this drastically increased their effectiveness. The fact that I essentially went from Musketmen to interstellar space travel in a few dozen turns was basically the only thing that let me win, otherwise I'm sure someone would have stopped me.

Civ Used: China
Total number of civs in game: 8
Difficulty: Immortal
Map type: Pangaea
Map size: Standard
Speed: Standard
Outcome: Scientific Victory on turn 325

Spoiler :

This game was the polar opposite of the last one. I took all those failures to heart and it made all the difference. My worker spent most of his time chopping forests early game, so my production was through the roof. This let me get my satellite cities up much faster and, more importantly, defend them effectively. It also massively increased my Faith and Culture production, so I was ahead of the curve on policies and religion.

Speaking of religion, I got everything I wanted:

Ancestor Worship
Theocratic Rule
Cathedrals
Cooperation
Sainthood
To the Glory of God

The most surprising thing there is probably Sainthood. Long story short, a four city Civ that takes Piety can have a lot of trouble generating Faith in the late game. What China can do is fill specialist slots insanely fast, and thus produces a constant stream of assorted Great People. This turns Sainthood into an effective Faith generator for a small amount of cities... which allows you to purchase more Great People. You get the picture. The foreign Culture and Science is just gravy.

Once again I rushed Penicillin, but this time I stopped by Metallurgy for Logistics Musketmen. This absolutely saved my bacon after a surprise DoW was beaten back by a hail of lead from my 10 or so defenders.

Whereas last game I got almost no Wonders, this game I managed to snag:
Pyramids
Hanging Gardens
Oracle
University of Sankore
Porcelain Tower
Red Fort
Leaning Tower
Slater Mill
Statue of Liberty
Empire State Building
Sydney Opera
Hubble Telescope
CERN

Aside from Pyramids, Hanging Gardens and Sankore, every one of these was built with Great Engineers, which was the only way that was happening. This was accomplished by using free Great People to get Engineers and Faith Purchasing them at opportune moments, plus China's naturally high amount of Specialists. Oracle is absolutely key to this because it gives you a lead in policies. It is 100% the most important and hardest to obtain, which is why my early game is basically entirely geared towards getting it with my first Great Engineer and snowballing from there.

The game is basically over once you get Hubble. This snowballs you into so many Great Scientists at a time when you have the maximum amount of Science possible that it's only like a dozen turns after when you hit Future Tech and purchase all of the Space Parts in 2 turns.

Civ Used: China
Total number of civs in game: 8
Difficulty: Prince
Map type: Pangaea
Map size: Standard
Speed: Standard
Outcome: Scientific Victory .... on turn 303!

Spoiler :

This last game was basically just for fun and to see how hard I could push the strat in ideal conditions. I restarted until I had a strong start in a forest/jungle biome with little to no hills without rivers. I also didn't have any neighbours directly next to me, so it gave me plenty of room for Cathedral farm clusters.

Aside from that, the main difference between this and the last game was the World Congress. Despite not ever building a single Envoy, I was always tied for lead in votes just due to accidental Great Diplomat production. This allowed me to immediately pass the World Science Initiative, which gave me a boost of about 2-3 extra Great Scientists and shaving off quite a few turns. There were still wars declared against me, but it was doomed to failure due to them sending Tericho/Pikemen against Logistics Musketmen.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Civ Used: England
Total number of civs in game: 12
Difficulty: Immortal
Map type: Fractal
Map size: Huge
Speed: Marathon
Outcome: Loss

Despite having a quite nice opening (religion + good monopoly) this game went wrong. I probably overextended, but not so much, I think. Anyway I was hit with severe unhappiness in Rennaisance. This happens every game, so I am used to it, but this time it was much worse and lasted longer. I still managed to conquer Portugal and badly maul Poland with my ships of the line. I even managed to get my happiness back to normal, and was quite content. I was behind a bit due to my long era of unhappiniess, but I figured I could catch up with steam mills.
However, within just a dozend turns, my unhappinss stacked up from around neutral to -40. Even an emergency golden age did not help the situation much. At that point I just quit in frustration.

 

[tu_79]

Civ: Persia
Settings: 8 civs, standard size, standard pace, Tectonics map (continents), Prince, No events.
Outcome: Cultural victory on 333 turn.

Spoiler :

After trying some Authority starts with bad luck, I let them go with Tradition -> Aesthetics -> Industry -> Freedom, trying to make use of the longer and more frequent golden age, and picked religious beliefs related to golden ages. It's quite difficult at the beggining, as the Immortal is fine for defense, but I couldn't make it take cities. I settled with only 5 cities after defeating nearby barbs. Denmark started to fight against Portugal quite early. Korea was my nearest neighbour, some interesting science progress at the beggining but it was laughable in the end, after a skirmish with Austria. Austria was just ok at the beggining, then Maria Theresa started to bride here and there, and suddenly Austria was leading in everything. I took me a couple eras to reach her level, thanks to tech stealing and extra trade routes. Her religion was annoying and I needed many inquisitors just to preserve my religion, although I could convert the late discovered civs Shosone and China (they were isolated in a small continent, and only China was faring well). Portugal and Denmark fighted many wars, but when Austria sided Denmark, Portugal was doomed. Ah, there were some iroquois in an irrelevant island, too.
I managed to stay peaceful for most of the game, but when I had influenced some civs, both Denmark and China declared war on me. Rightly so, cause I was threatening victory. Then, the extra movement while in a golden age came in handy, as I could repel a great force with just some units, mostly melee and siege (I was low on horses). I can say too that the tactical AI has improved leagues. Denmark tried alternative paths once the front assault showed useless. It was quite competent killing my units, their units go for the kill and retreat their wounded ones, massive use of citadels was employed. Its fleet was massive too, but luckly it was on the other side of the continent, and when some of those ships arrived I had some cannons to welcome them. I could just turtle and wait for my victory, but it was too fun and I got involved in the combat the last two hours.

After renaissance, my happiness was so high that I could focus on growth for most of the time, even without building walls. I hoarded wonders and great works like no other civ. It wasn't a non-stop golden age, but it seemed that I was on a long golden age every era. This time, I sent many trade routes to the civs that were resisting more my influence, and a single musician did the rest (a second one was on his way when I won). Other than a couple of embassies, I completely ignored diplomacy.
I think Persia major selling point is that almost permanent golden age with its extra unit movement. Had I focus in domination, the extra movement would have come in handy, but some timing is required.

 

[Galbias]

Civ Used: Celts
Total Number of Civs: 8
Difficulty: Immortal
Map Type: Pangea
Map Size: Standard
Speed: Standard
Settings: defaults + Transparent Diplomacy
Mods: Wonder race
Version: 10/28
Outcome: Culture Victory on turn 310

I decided to try the border blob strategy, with Epona and two policies in Authority I was getting scaling 45 Food, 30 Gold, 15 Sci/Culture with every tile growth. It took awhile to get started, but once I had Amphitheaters and enough population for Inspiration to kick in it worked almost too well, to the point where I had too much population and not enough improved tiles, and had minor unhappiness problems for awhile since instant yields don't help in that department. I went for Cultural victory using the usual Tradition/Aesthetics/Industry/Freedom progression aside from the two policies in Authority. I miraculously managed to avoid getting into a single war despite having Carthage as a neighbor, I was constantly expecting a DoW from her most of the game though I did kind of slack off with military production at the end. There was a fair amount of war going on between the AIs, a runaway Pacal seemed like he was going to be a threat, especially after he conquered Egypt, but I was eventually able to surpass him in tech and culture, and end the game before a Diplo victory was close.

Archaeologist spam was huge, giving me both a ton of extra Artifacts and a couple diplo boosts to boot from building Landmarks. By the end of the game I actually had DoF with everyone left (even Pacal after he flipped ideologies to Freedom) except England.

Spoiler :