Community Deity Game #16 - Sweden

[consentient]

Map #16 - 'A Friend in Swede is a Friend Indeed'

Suggested VC: Domination or Diplomatic

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Map Info:

Spoiler :

Type: HB Continents
Settings: Low Sea Level, Cool, Arid, Sparse Resources, 7 civs, 20 CS, No NW
Tweaks: Iron Added, Human player starts with 250 gold

Achievements:

tbc by the community

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Enjoy!

 

[consentient]

The idea to give the human player 250 gold is to emphasise how wide the kinds of choices you have when playing as Sweden. Your GP gifts can produce all manner of different results. The starting gold could be used to get a Shrine, or save towards an early Worker, or tiles, etc., etc.

The starting dirt is a bit poorer than usual, and the resources are sparse, so the gold should go some way to compensating for that as well as making interesting and divergent choices.

 

[beetle]

Thanks C! I think I will settle on the mountain and hope that hex and a couple of deer get me a religion with the tundra pantheon.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Dance of the Aurora gone on t10. Really?

 

[Sclb]

Seems to be a lot of tundra locations so anyone popping faith ruins or CS will get it.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

The terrain is pretty poor, so I went full Piety, waiting for UU's to come online... but honestly, vanilla Piety by itself is utter utter trash. I am going to replay it with Tradition and have my little carolean army killing these basics.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Maybe Liberty Spam would be alright, nobody covets a wasteland, yes?

 

[poxpower]

Maybe Liberty Spam would be alright, nobody covets a wasteland, yes?

HOW WRONG YOU ARE lol

Spoiler :

This is turn 79. I've already declared war on Pocatello to steal his settler so he wouldn't take my 4th city spot, now Germany and England are both roaming around with settlers trying to settle behind my cities to basically get one luxury in the middle of nowhere in the tundra. Germany just backstabbed me because I bought that tile to block his stupid unit. I've already made him declare two wars to get him off my back and even without trading embassies, the first thing he did was covet my lands lol.
I'm losing gold because I have so many units I need to defend against his inevitable attack and he's got a huge army with swordsmen and pikemen already.

Liberty could be good just to settle those spots ASAP and then defend the borders, basically. 3-city NC is letting 2 spots open for those 3 wackjobs to covet even if they're 30 tiles away lol.

 

[beetle]

Dance of the Aurora gone on t10. Really?

Seems to be a lot of tundra locations so anyone popping faith ruins or CS will get it.

Plan B then to settle one of the a Silver for Religious Idols? But which Silver?

 

[adcarrymaokai]

HOW WRONG YOU ARE lol

Spoiler :

This is turn 79. I've already declared war on Pocatello to steal his settler so he wouldn't take my 4th city spot, now Germany and England are both roaming around with settlers trying to settle behind my cities to basically get one luxury in the middle of nowhere in the tundra. Germany just backstabbed me because I bought that tile to block his stupid unit. I've already made him declare two wars to get him off my back and even without trading embassies, the first thing he did was covet my lands lol.
I'm losing gold because I have so many units I need to defend against his inevitable attack and he's got a huge army with swordsmen and pikemen already.

Liberty could be good just to settle those spots ASAP and then defend the borders, basically. 3-city NC is letting 2 spots open for those 3 wackjobs to covet even if they're 30 tiles away lol.

Idk I settled 5 cities with Piety, but I was also at war with southern neighbor for his workers, who built silver mines to speed up the production of settlers...

 

[poxpower]

Idk I settled 5 cities with Piety, but I was also at war with southern neighbor for his workers, who built silver mines to speed up the production of settlers...

I've had to stop 3 different AIs from sending settlers behind my cities, aka sabotage themselves to sabotage me for no reason.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

I've had to stop 3 different AIs from sending settlers behind my cities, aka sabotage themselves to sabotage me for no reason.

Once I got my desired spots, I stopped caring, though S neighbor founded 2 cities on bare snow. *facepalm*

 

[poxpower]

I really don't know how they coded how the AI settles but maybe someone should rework that lol

 

[stormtrooper412]

What the actual Christ

 

[consentient]

T241 Diplomatic

Details (HEAVY SPOILERS):

Spoiler :

I began the game with a classic Swedish Honor game, killing barbs, Germans and Native Americans and gifting the GG to the CS to make them all my allies. I stole 2 workers and 2 settlers from each of the two closest neighbours, neither of whom ever recovered. Germany went Honor too, which kinda means that their cities (both of them) were pretty weak and small when I came to capture them, having wiped out all their units. Archers and Spears were enough here. Shoshone were next, and a bunch of Composites quickly took them down. I annexed Moson Kahni early, and it became my biggest city by population by the end of the game. Not much production, but lots of river farms and an important port. (EIC was built here).

England were next, and I had XBs by this point, with range and logistics, and war roads helped me retreat them away from the UU. Also by this point, the Militaristic CS were giving Keshiks and African Elephants which were great.

The Dutch might have been tricky had they not settled their expo at the landmass-end of the peninsula and built their own road, but there was just enough room North of Amsterdam for the XBs to finish them off. The Continent was mine at this point, and I decided to beeline Astronomy and see who was left.

It was a bit of a shock to find that the other 2 civs each had their own continent. It was an even bigger shock to find how far ahead in tech they were. They remained ahead all the way through the game, despite sound, measured play from myself. On turn of victory I had 1400+ BPT and was still taking 4 a turn from my Cargoes with Hiawatha! They had reached Information Age and were both pushing hard for Culture Victories.

So anyway, rewinding to when I discovered this, I looked at my troops and the demographic military score, and decided against Domination because it would probably have been long and messy, and no doubt I'll be playing Domination again in another game soon anyway.

So I knuckled down for growth, science (as much as is possible in a game without Rationalism) and economy, and made sure to pass World Religion so I could win the vote at the first sitting. Wiping out 4 out of 7 civs means you need more votes, but there is less competition for them.

The game winner here was the World Fair, which I won easily after setting the other two at war, and they actually responded by completely ignoring WF. This allowed me to finish out Commerce and get far enough into Freedom to stay happy in the face of two gargantuan Order civs.

Didn't feel too hard but could easily have lost had a few things not gone my way.

Full Honor, Full Patronage, Freedom 5, Full Commerce

 

[beetle]

Dance of the Aurora gone on t10. Really?

Your mileage may vary. I got DotA on turn 32, after settling on a Silver. DotA buffs tundra mine, so not bad at all.

Stupid AI has planted three cities near my cap already. I used my 250 gold to buy tiles in the third ring of my cap.

EDIT to ask: So why no Natural Wonders? Is that a standard feature of HB maps? Or because of sparse resources? Maybe include that detail in OP?

 

[stormtrooper412]

Not sure what you mean, you *can* disable natural wonders in a HB map, but it's optional

 

[consentient]

Yeah, sorry I forgot to mention. You can assume that all maps I roll will now have NW missing, unless Spain. I just don't like them any more. They make the game more boring, not less.

 

[beetle]

How are NW are “boring”? Are ruins “boring”? I get the idea that NW -> more RNG; and that more RNG -> more boring. Is that it?

They make the game more boring, not less.

Your maps, so your call. I also agree that NW are not well balanced. OTOH it is really difficult to coherently argue that removing a feature makes the game “better”. If nothing else:

1. six less Global Happy (particularly harsh for wide play)
2. one less safe harbor WC proposal (well, it’s still there, but now totally pointless)
3. one less pantheon (and a very reliably one, if the player got lucky)

And all of the above hurt the player more than the AI.

 

[consentient]

1. Makes the game more of a challenge
2. has never ever featured in my games
3. is the main reason why I disable them. If there is no other faith pantheon, and there is a NW, esp. one that you can work straight away, then people usually settle it and go for OWN. I can't think of anything more boring and predictable, tbh.

EDIT: There are other, more minor reasons, like the CS quests to find NW. These are either too easy, or really difficult when certain areas are inaccessible because of closed borders or natural barriers or ocean. I don't like that aspect.

EDIT2: It's not like I'm 100% against OWN and DF games. In some of my maps they will be a possibility. It's just that I want to be in control of that. I don't like how OWN is the first choice in like 40% of games.