[BNW] Community Deity Game 31 - Russia

[beetle]

Well, I lost again, by CV to the southern neighbor T324. In hindsight, clearly I should have taken him out first, but I was lulled by the game-long DOF and being rather desperate to have someone for lump sum trades for my Horses and then Oil. Gold was a problem all game.

Attached is my T141 screenshot from this 2nd play, I am doing better, but my cities are are still half the size @Grendeldef managed!

This time, I miss founding, so that was disappointing. The last religion went on T76, which is kind of ridiculous. I had the obvious choice for pantheon.

I was first to ideologies this time through, so I am going to reset back to that. I will go Order and aim for SV, and be content with a single cap.

 

[Grendeldef]

One thing that is clear is that I got much more help from religion than you did - Pagodas are great for early happiness and will help quite a lot with crawling through policies and I managed to get the 3rd religion. Had I been paying more attention I would've obviously enhanced much earlier but keeping Spain at war and especially Isa losing her capital slowed her spreading hers a bit - same was true with Pedro on smaller scale.
Another thing that isn't blatantly obvious from these pics but I think that I had more workers from early on - I got 3 from Will and 2 of his Settlers + 4 from Hanoi and few from Assyria later on, the Liberty one and I think I hard build two. Anyway, in those pics I have 13 & 14 workers respectively which seems several more than you have. From ~T15 onwards I had at ~1.5:1 workers to cities ratio and later with the 2nd continent wars the Worker count was in high 30s.

 

[beetle]

I really missed not getting religion. It is pure RNG. Even my first game I, barely got the last religion, and there were no faith buildings left.

In both my games, I had so many workers early that I was deleting one per turn, else my science was paralyzed from the negative gpt. But at with gold from founding, in my first game it was not as bad.

 

[penguin74]

Turn 357 SV. Was my 3rd try on the lite map. Didn't keep track of achievement points as I barely win diety anyway. Founded 9 cities, 7 before NC. Used GE on Nat'l College. Never got a religion, they went way to fast. Had enough faith for a prophet, but the last one went before I got mine. Saved it all up to buy 3 scientists in the end to get techs in time.

Spoiler :

William and Pedro were never a factor. Took Amsterdam and 2 of his cities, but then spent much of the rest of the game at war with Assyria. Pacal was the force on the other continent, but I never got over there to cause any trouble. He had launched 4 parts when I won, so not sure how close he was.

Kind of lucky win. AI had plenty of time to beat me but just didn't. Fun map. On to the next

 

[beetle]

Well, I lost again, by CV to the southern neighbor T324... I was first to ideologies this time through, so I am going to reset back to that. I will go Order and aim for SV, and be content with a single cap.

My Order SV took me until T348. That felt quite terrible, so I tried again, opening Freedom on T214 when I was first to an ideology. Everything seems to be going better, even though I was the only Freedom civ, but again I lost to the southern neighbor by CV, this time on T328. I was about tens turns out from SV.

So I give up, and will be happy with the T348 SV. Achievements:

1 - Age of military outposts
a) 1pt (1,2,3,4,6) per Krepost built before NC & Library in the city, capped @6
b) 0.5 pts per Krepost built before Education, capped @4

4+2 for six points.

2) Age of Cossacks - max # of Cossacks alive before Atomic Era
10(+) = 4 pts
+2 pts if at least 5 of those are on the other continent than Moscow. Continent defined as large mass having at least 1 original capital but not Moscow.

Took the cheese, six points.

3) It's freezing but Rasputin laughs at you - # of cities having at least one improved tundra tile other than road before NC.

Three cities, three points. I do not know why I thought more than two would be a stretch.

4) Screw the infidels - buy buildings with faith before Information Era

From my borrowed religion, all my cites (9) had Mosques and Cathedrals, plus the Mosque in the one captured Holy City. So that would be 19, but this is (quite rightfully) capped at six points. I also bought 3 GS.

5) Playground bully - puppet cities of major civs other than capitals before Information Era

I only had the one city early (CBs), and it was a cap, so zero points. My other conquests (including Prora city from a peace deal) were late.

Still, 21 points has to be a personal best!

 

[Grendeldef]

T254 Dom, achis: 27 pts - I seriously failed with damn tundra tiles.

1) 5 pts, 2 pre Library & 6 pre Education
2) 6 pts, 10+ Cossacks from ~T210 onwards till the end
3) 4 pts, one city + a tile in 3 cities
4) 6 pts, Pagodas in every settled (and annexed) city
5) 6 pts, puppets from Assyria, Spain, Shoshone, Celts & Brazil

The write-up will be updated.

Spoiler Madrid :

Early DoW with Will to get a worker and few turns later a 2nd and after that few more in form of Settlers. I wasn't planning to plant as many cities but the one by the Cerro looked like one easy to defend, nice place to start attacks and send Caravans and a frontal city to quickly adopt my religion and to stop spreading of Isa's religion.
Assyria wasn't cheap to bribe for wars but he was relentless, nicely to Madrid and kept Brazilian religion small.
I got religion (Tithe & Pagodas) T63, finished Liberty T86, the GE was used for NC T97, T98 Oracle, made peace with Will ~T100 for more trading partners - even crappy ones, T101 SoZ as apparently none other went Honor, T111 Machinery and oddly enough I had decent cash for upgrades, T118 Assyria started spying so I declared next turn.
My spy went to Assur but seeing the steal time of 41 turns he moved back home and effectively retired - didn't steal anything in the game, didn't catch a single spy and rest were used influence on CSs or visibility for Arties.
T127 Education but didn't buy Unis mainly because I didn't have the money but also because the cities were relatively hammer rich and got those in 5 to 8 turns. T141 Renaissance, T142 finally remembered to enhance the religion and T144 captured Madrid which after the initial Assyrian city was relatively easy but keeping wasn't.

Spoiler Assur :

Spoiler Amsterdam :

Spoiler T200 :

Spoiler Moson Kahni :

Spoiler Palenque :

Spoiler Rio :

Spoiler Edinburgh :

Spoiler policies :

Spoiler Order :

---

As pointed out I miscalculated the achi #3 points which should now be corrected.

 

[beetle]

Wow @Grendeldef, that looks like a great game! Please include a pic of your home territory. Also, and maybe you will be getting to this, but what should we be paying attention to in the T200 SS?

 

[Grendeldef]

Please include a pic of your home territory.

Sure. I was uploading more pix but I think I reached the limit of pix per post and if that's the case I'll put the rest in a different post.

Also, and maybe you will be getting to this, but what should we be paying attention to in the T200 SS?

Nothing in particular. I just took it back then to remind me of the time I settled the hop-city and to illustrate who was the wonder-whore #1. I've never thought that gosh, I took way too many SSs during a game but I've often sadly missed the ones I didn't take.

 

[beetle]

...I just took it back then to remind me of the time I settled the hop-city...

Nice, glad I asked! I totally missed the settler in that pic!

I also see now that your game effectively had one less AI than mine. Since I have played this map a few times now, it is amusing to me that the dynamics between the AIs on the other continent have been different each time, but none of them looked like your game.

 

[rgduck]

I'm late to the party, but this is a fun map! I don't think I've ever gotten to use the tundra pantheon before.

Spoiler Scoring clarification question :

For achis: 25,5 pts - I seriously failed with damn tundra tiles. After a recheck it seems to have been even worse.

1) 5 pts, 2 pre Library & 6 pre Education
2) 6 pts, 10+ Cossacks from ~T210 onwards till the end
3) 2.5 pts, one city + a tile in 3 cities
4) 6 pts, Pagodas in every settled (and annexed) city
5) 6 pts, puppets from Assyria, Spain, Shoshone, Celts & Brazil

Shouldn't this achievement #3 be worth a total of 4 points? The original post doesn't mention half-points.

 

[beetle]

Shouldn't this achievement #3 be worth a total of 4 points?

Well, I though @Grendeldef should have only awarded himself two points (two improved tiles == two points) but it was his map!

I agree, it was a fun map! As you may have noted, I played it like four times!

 

[rgduck]

Spoiler My game through T125 :

Liberty wide continues to impress me. I'm increasingly convinced that it's stronger than 4-city Tradition when there's enough space. I'm almost at a loss for what to do with all these hammers. My growth isn't great, but that's the tundra's fault.

I founded the capital and two expos in the tundra, so I was excited to get Dance of the Aurora as a pantheon, but I still got beaten to the fifth religion. Fortunately, the Netherlands founded an excellent religion for me: Mosques and God of the Hunt. Even so, the tundra cities are pretty bad, requiring constant feeding with trade routes just to avoid starving.

I decided not to rush-build the NC (around T70). My capital was still small, so NC wasn't going to yield all that much science right away. Instead I used the finisher for an academy and hard-built the NC. I think I came out ahead.

Assyria was being pretty aggressive, so I launched a CB invasion and took Assur before making white peace. When XBs arrived, I declared war again just to kill some units and get a better peace deal, then moved on to Spain. I took Barcelona and took another peace deal. The Netherlands is next, but they've got the Great Wall.

 

[rgduck]

T217 DomV, 30 pts

Spoiler Achievements :

1) 6 pts (Kreposts before Libs in all 6 self-settled cities)
2) 6 pts
3) 6pts<?> (This scoring is from my reading of the OP. 3 cities settled in the tundra = 3pts + each had an improved tile before NC = 3pts)
4) 6 pts (Mosques in all 6 self-settled cities)
5) 6 pts (Sao Paulo, Nineveh, and seven more non-capital cities on the other continent )

Spoiler T125 to end :

I took Amsterdam with some difficulty, thanks to their terrain and Great Wall (and my unwillingness to found a bad city in order to GG-bomb). The army then retraced its path to take Madrid and wipe out Assyria.

I kept teching and growing my cities, but the only other techs I really used were Navigation, Mil. Sci., and Dynamite. I took Rio with cannons and knights, then upgraded to artillery and Cossacks. That army met up with the XBs on the other continent around T190.

I definitely lost some turns by teching to Economics before Dynamite and Navigation. I had been worried that artillery wouldn't suffice to finish the game. But fortunately the Celts had already beaten up the Maya and Shoshone by the time my forces arrived. Palenque and Moson Kahni fell quickly. Getting through the down to the Celt's capital was a slog, but still finished well before any AI GWBs showed up.

 

[Grendeldef]

Good to see newcomers here but as I haven't been playing since May I also need to remind myself about the maps, rules etc before making judgments of any sort hence I need a larger screen than is currently available.

I'll be back shortly as I am still alive. .

---------- edit ------------

Yups, clearly I've messed the achi #3 points in my game for some weird reason.

 

[Grendeldef]

I'm late to the party, but this is a fun map!

Shouldn't this achievement #3 be worth a total of 4 points? The original post doesn't mention half-points.

Better later than never as we're hardly an overcrowded bunch atm.

Yes, you're right - I screwed up. The explanation I think is that at some point fiddling with the achis I had it as 0,5 pt per city with improved Tundra tile and 1 pt per city settled on Tundra and counted my points by that but since the OP is written differently my hallucinated views while finishing the game are obsolete. I'll fix my points shortly.

Well, I though @Grendeldef should have only awarded himself two points (two improved tiles == two points) but it was his map!

I agree, it was a fun map! As you may have noted, I played it like four times!

I think it's 4 points as 1 for a settled city + 3 from cities with at least one improved tile but I'll try to find a proper save to check what the situation actually was by the turn of NC. Hardly a matter of life & death but this got me intrigued besides as peeps seem to look at the map favourably I might use it as a training camp for ~100 turns before tackling anything else. Also, by Beetle's comments, it's quite possible that the AI's behaviour changes quite a bit from try to try which is always interesting.