[BNW] Community Deity Game 38 - Genghis Khan

[penguin74]

Turn 210 update.

Spoiler :

finally took Stockholm. Sweden attacked right after I took the Mayan capital, so no time to regroup. I was never really threatened, but anytime I tried to push forward, knights would swarm in and do heavy damage. It became a long 'wear him out' kind of war. He had 6-7 C\S allies, mostly on my southern border. Eventually I just decided to wait for artillery and just move up then.

I have 5 fully upgraded keshiks left, the ones without logistics and range became cavalry. I had to peace out after taking the capital as he had frigates and a privateer offshore to take it right back. I'll clear him out eventually when i get battleships.

Currently finishing off siams last 2 cities. Pacal has 2 left but they are out of the way and not worth the time right now. Indonesia is already gone, compliments of napoleon, and Morocco's capital is also french. Napoleon has a 6 tech lead on me, no one else matters. Askia is still around, but not much threat.

The rest of the game will likely be one longwar with france.

 

[beetle]

I turtled for my typical (but with five cities) Tradition / Rationalism / Freedom SV on t310, which is a little better than usual for me.

I am loving seeing all the early DOM with the maps all reddish brown. I will probably trying again for HAC, and getting something from Chariot Archers.

Are folks getting Chivalry before NC? I am not clear at all about how much of a beeline that should be? I only aimed for it right after Civil Service (so before Education/Machinery/Steel) but that was not very early.

 

[Grendeldef]

I don't know about others but I was expecting a much longer game so NC first on T82 and Chivalry only T95 which isn't particularly fast but my whole game was all over the place as I kept changing the Master Plan. Liberty was finished T80 and I planted the GS on Iron. Education was on ~T114 if I remember correctly as I seem to have lost/misplaced my notes but that wasn't important in the grand scheme as Valadaz said & I speculated after taking Palenque.
The fastest way would've been Keshiks all the way. Arties was a far from optimal plan B especially when I grabbed half a dozen Mayan Missionaries and kept my 5th city following his religion to be able to use my faith with Holy Warriors so I didn't hard build that many later units. I could've had much larger army but I was lazy & amazed by the lack of opposition and as usual the shortness of effective period of Keshiks always comes to me as a surprise - I'm far more used to play with CAs which are still useful with early planes.

 

[GenuineRisk]

Are folks getting Chivalry before NC? I am not clear at all about how much of a beeline that should be? I only aimed for it right after Civil Service (so before Education/Machinery/Steel) but that was not very early.

NC should be finished well before teching Chivalry. In my rusty early game, I had about T95 NC, T108 Chivalry, and T120 Education. Not great, but comfortably good enough on this OP map.

 

[vadalaz]

T99 NC, T100 Chivalry and T108 Education here, so the Philosophy detour actually delayed Keshiks for me. I remember skipping NC when trying to go for very fast DomVs with Arabia.

If I replayed this, I'd probably settle 3 expos on the NWs, build the minimum infrastructure (Monument, Library, probably Granary and Stable), then just focus on units and never build NC or universities. Maybe a quick market in the capital to spawn a GM at some point.

 

[Blatc]

I agree with skipping NC, and minimal buildings, if potential is there to go for very fast DomV; this is definitely an appropriate civ for it and Total Dom in sub-T180 indicates the map (and players) are very good.

 

[Grendeldef]

...if potential is there to go for very fast DomV; this is definitely an appropriate civ for it and Total Dom in sub-T180 indicates the map

Hence the Mongols was excluded in the original implementation but also the map is ridiculously good after some editing. I'm not sure if I have the original roll and I only played it for few turns but Uluru & KSM were added later, the luxes & resources are more numerous than in the original and I think the CSs have also switched places. This was done to ease the somewhat tedious nature of TD and help people with experience with it as it was the theme for this CDG. Genghis dom on Pangaea isn't a great challenge by any means but the logistics behind TD might be. I don't think my lifetime is long enough to get a random roll to give equally good map.

Slightly off topic but as I'm unfamiliar with edited maps and AI was crappy on this map there arises a question - is the AI negatively affected by improving the land in form of limiting expanding and hence handicapping itself in several ways ? Might be just a coincidence but I think that in some of the previous CDGs with improved land the AI never really got out of their starting blocks. This seems rather odd at first but the AI does weird things anyway.

 

[vadalaz]

From the replay it appears that Indonesia only settled their first expo on turn 49... I don't have any early game saves, so I've tried to quickly recreate this in IGE to see what's up, but of course now they expand normally. I suppose it could have something to do with raging barbs?

 

[penguin74]

Turn 257 defeat.

Spoiler :

well, that came out of nowhere. I had finished off siam and was clearing out swedens last cities with battleships. Most of my troops had moved to Rabat where i took moroccos last city to use as a staging point and upgrade area to attack France. I was 2nd in all categories, but Frances population was 5x mine.

I wasn't paying attention to culture and tourism. My cpt was about 140, not great but respectable, and I had i think 28 tourism. france was influential with 2 civs, but they had 1 or 2 cities each, so i didnt think anything of it. thats when the notification popped that he was close, right after hitting influential with sweden. his tourism was 365 and culture off the charts. i bribed him to DOW Askia, and then attacked once i upgraded to tanks, but it was too late.

One of the better games I played, thought i was in an ok position, but sometimes someone just runs away. Will try again, .Maybe liberty will go better.

 

[Grendeldef]

More pics etc from my game T115 onwards

Spoiler T115 -> :

After taking Palenque Askia backstabbed on the next turn and Sweden DoWed T123 which was all fine dandy but Swedish Longswordmen were a bit of a pain to kill but against GW the shine over my beloved CAs. I also kept Helsinki, converted it & GG bombed nearby CdP to help with the gpt issue as the road even to Sukhotai was extremely long.



The lands of Mongolia on T150 which is a reasonable indicator how the game is going and easy to remember fixed point for reference.
3 Missionaries sieging Hsia are the last of the 6-pack keeping the city Catholic and being able to use Holy Warriors.

T131 RIP Siam, T143 Maya, T145 Sweden, T146 Morocco which was funny as a turn earlier they gave the 2nd city to Indonesia and I needed that land for Askia's Marrakech and hefty number of Gallesses along the coastline. T159 Indonesia for which I got help from CS allies, T169 Askia and he even managed to get city back with only naval units.

T130 Renaissance, WC turn later and LToP T150 and the GE for FP. The other WWs I build were Pyramids in the T103 and Red Fort T162. T174 Arties.




Mongolia in the end. Kilimandjaro looks sad without a city but Siamese city the was in a crappy place so it was razed and I never settled there for some reason. I could've just bombed the mountain to come to daddy.





After Liberty I went to Piety to save some faith but to get some money from Theocracy. I opened Rationalism at some point as it seemed that I could keep in positive happiness. Patronage was opened mainly for FP but after rechecking the achis Consulates seemed like a decent investment as well. Honor would've been a massive waste here as Khans were numerous and XP fast to get anyway and money too late if gone full.

 

[beetle]

Turn 257 defeat. … well, that came out of nowhere … but sometimes someone just runs away.

I hate it when that happens. My advise is to just keep playing! The dom VC screen will still pop up.

 

[beetle]

In my third play (Honor), which feels much stronger than my first two games (Liberty, then Tradition), I am T100 NC, T129 Chivalry and T145 Education (and only that early because I stole it). Emphasis added to the below.

I don't know about others but I was expecting a much longer game so NC first on T82 and Chivalry only T95 which isn't particularly fast…

In my rusty early game, I had about T95 NC, T108 Chivalry, and T120 Education. Not great, but comfortably good enough on this OP map.

T99 NC, T100 Chivalry and T108 Education here, so the Philosophy detour actually delayed Keshiks for me.

Suggestions please for where I go to read up on play immediately post NC? Thank you!

 

[GenuineRisk]

@beetle I think your tech times post-NC are a consequence of your play in the first 100 turns more than whatever you did after NC. You can have T100 NC with a great early game or a terrible early game, and it's not a great benchmark on its own. It sounds like your cities are not big enough, possibly due to lack of workers to develop tiles. I went Liberty, and I think it's easier to play than Honor (even if I love HCA), but either one (or Tradition) will work.

 

[beetle]

You can have T100 NC with a great early game or a terrible early game, and it's not a great benchmark on its own.

Huh. That is about the only benchmark that I can hit. I am going to assume that I have been playing a terrible early game all this time.

EDIT: With my 3rd game, the far-away run-away launched on T324. I am going to try a forth time: Tradition, and abusing map knowledge (as I did with HAC game).

 

[raider980]

Spoiler T150 :

I was just mopping up Morocco and was trying to decide who to attack next, France or the Songhai, when Napoleon declared war. So he made my decision for me. France has Musketeers so I was a bit worried. (Turns out I did play a bit past the screenshot and Keshiks can handle them, it takes a lot of shots but I have a lot of Keshiks.)

I made a big mistake that hindered my progress, two actually.

1. I didn't build any horsemen so the pikemen had a hard time keeping up with the Keshiks.
2. And then, the one time Lancers would actually be helpful, I took a dumb tech path and still don't have them yet. I had delusions of capturing some coastal cities and building Frigates to help take France and the Songhai, but they're not even going to be needed.

Spoiler T150 map :

 

[Grendeldef]

Since peeps are replaying this I thought I might as well but as I dislike replays I did the Easy version and it was hilarious. I also had a plan of doing total religious conversion but I failed at it mainly due to double digit negative happiness spawning the barb hordes which seriously derailed the route of my 2 prophets.
T149 TD without much of a problems apart from happiness along the way. 6 cities and roughly the same style of play as in the proper play but only 2 Unis and less infra in general - not an "only Keshiks" after Chivalry play by any means as I needed all happiness I could get due to razing several cities simultaneously. Keshiks were doing single digit dmg to Cover 2 Musketeers so in the end killing troops was much slower than taking down cities.

Without any alternative motives the much faster way for TD would be to start killing immediately after getting ChAs. The opposition is negligible at best at the strain on happiness much smaller with smaller one at a time. There'll some initial problems with happiness & money but there're enough CSs to counter those though in this game I had extremely bad luck with CS quests.

Spoiler pics :

Full Liberty, Piety for faith & gpt, Patronage for FP, Tradition mainly for happiness and the last dumped on Commerce.

 

[beetle]

I might take 400 turns, and will not be TD, but I think I am going to wring a DOM VC from the map. I am grateful!

 

[Grendeldef]

Well, unlike faith persistence is a virtue and by this rate I need to do the Lite version as well.

 

[penguin74]

Turn 270 Dom. victory. 1st DV on deity, 1st under turn 300 win as well. I'll take it even though map knowledge helped a lot from the earlier play through and loss.

Spoiler :

6 city liberty. Finished off Siam with CA's and CB's with 1 horseman. Planned to do what I did last time and go for Pacal next, but Sweden tried to swoop in to my city by KSM while I was away. I had just hit Chivalry, so keshiks flew back and really did a number on his troops. I accepted a peace deal eventually as I needed the money and happiness because the world denounced the hell out of me when Siam fell. With Sweden weakened, I want back to Pacal. It was basically 10 or so keshiks running around killing stuff. I finished him off not to long later.

I had finished liberty opened diplo and got the +20 influence policy as well before going into commerce. I started building a 2nd army by my capital as the keshiks went into Sweden. Took me longer then I expected, but finally took Stockholm. He still had 1 city over by France, so he wasn't eliminated.

France had taken both Indonesia and Morocco's capitals already. Songhai had the biggest military but wasn't doing anything with it so I bribed them to attack France. I took Morocco's last city and eliminated them before declaring on Napoleon and moving north to Jakarta. I had artillery by now (hit it around turn 187 i think) and the keshiks all had logistics and range, so I didn't bother upgrading. I took 2 rationalism policies for a little science boost but never went back to it. Was puppeting most of the cities i took but annexed a few so I had bases to quick but Landsknechts to upgrade into Lancers just to provide cover for the ranged units. Eventually took Paris around 233 or so.

Waited a few turns to get bombers and bought 6 each in 2 cities. I had plenty of money and happiness after finishing commerce and buying 3 GM's. Every city state was allied with me, so it was just a matter of wearing down Askia's troops. Took a little longer than I expected as he had artillery too so to get in range I had to put troops at risk. Eventually the bombers wore down the defenses, and the endless lancers running interference protected the artillery long enough to take the city.

Total dom would have been possible but not worth the extra turns it would have taken. Maybe one day I'll be able to do this on the 1st try on a non-lite verision.

 

[raider980]

Total Domination Victory T214 woo hoo! I like this easy version. Keshik's are ridiculous, I never grasped their power before. I can see why the won the best UU thread. The ability to fire without a chance of getting hit is possibly op, but I love them all the same.

Spoiler T214 Total Domination :

I went full Liberty, then dipped into Patronage to keep my CS allies. Next into Commerce for the discounted roads - there were a lot of roads. Then I finished Patronage so that I didn't have to deal with CS enemies and because I figured I didn't need science because my Keshik's were doing all the work.

Order of destruction:
T83 Siam
T114: Maya
T130: Sweeden
T151 Morrocco
T187: France
* T205 I was in a position to take Gao as the last city of the Songhai but I misjudged how much effort it was to take out the last three Indonesian cities that were on small islands. That turned out to be perhaps the trickiest.
T214: Indonesia
T214: Songhai

Spoiler Victory Pics :

I ended up taking Gao with Artillery because I had to wait for the rest of my Keshiks to finish off Indonesia.

The Mongolian heartland.