Defensive Chinese Diplomacy Victory

[Tyxerxa]

Hello together,
I'm a long time reader, first time writer on this forum. Only after the last patch I started playing, as I am sick at the moment and have to stay at home. I have not seen anyone talking about working strategies to win on deity after the patch. Currently I try to develop a tactic, that is based on the fortresses one can create with a great general.

Civ: China
SP: Tradition->Honor->Patronage or: Honor->Patronage
Goal: Diplomatic victory

I'm still refining a lot, but the basic idea is to be attacked constantly while abusing Archer/Crossbowmen with Oligarchy and the Honor finisher for money. The reason I picked China is because I need an insane amount of Great Generals to pull it off and need to have money to by off city states and spam research agreements. The tactic has a bit of a bad taste, because the AI walks a lot into the fortresses and gets destroyed.

Problems so far:
Without Tradition the expansion early on is hard and I lack food. Without honor the money gets low and Tradition builds up slowly, also I have the general a lot later. The ideal setting seems to be a small to standard map and I am still experimenting on the map type. Tried pangea and tried archipels.

Alternative:
The alternative seems to be Aztechs and Tradition (and maybe honor) into Piety for a cultural victory.

Questions:

• Does cities and fortresses killing enemies help to get Great Generals?
• Do Gardens and the National Epic enhance the generation of Great Generals?
• How can expand to about four cities as honor without running into food problems (happiness and money work fine)?

Maybe I am totally off with this strategy, if so - please tell me.

 

[aimlessgun]

I don't think cities or forts give GG XP. Gardens certainly don't help.

I'm not sure about your food question..that's highly map dependent and individual to every city site. The tradition completion bonus is nice and all, but it's certainly not going to solve any food issues on its own and comes well after you could have settled 4 cities.

I also doubt that you can generate huge amounts of money just by defense alone. You'd have to actively go hunting to make it a significant source of income.

 

[Tyxerxa]

The idea is provoking multiple enemies into war, while destroying them with AoE defense by the fortresses. Fortresses damage every enemy unit within a radius of 1 square by 3 every turn. With multiple armies attacking combined with ranged defense units you can make quite a fortune. Problematic are enemy workers, that can damage the fortress and air units.

The problem however is:

1.) One city challenge on Deity looks impossible.

2.) Starting around a river and mountains seems to work best, as enemy melee units need to cross the river in order to attack. Does anyone know if cities also cause an attack penalty when they are based on a hill?

3.) Wonders early on or scouts are out of the question. I experimented with warrior, monument and worker first and usually go for the early ressources in order to buy some stuff, like papershop and granary.

4.) Archery is also a must early on. Archers are superior as units for China, as they are ranged, cheap and upgrade without iron into Cho-Ko-Nu.

5.) Biggest problem is slow growth, culture and science, as well as the transition from Cho-Ko-Nu into Trebuchet/Cannon/Artillery. I considered rushing physics with Aztechs as alternative approach, but I guess this would put me too far behind on the tech race.

6.) I usually keep one or two barb camps for farming culture.

7.) Aztech provides a lot more culture, but usually dies due to the lack of great generals.

 

[aimlessgun]

I like the vision of the Diety AI providing this endless stream of units to give you money, but frankly in my experience it won't quite work out that way. They'll come in waves, with significant downtime between them.

Another problem is that you want multiple people attacking you, but you also want an easily defensible chokepoint type area to funnel them to your forts. It's pretty hard to generate both of those things on a map: if you have a chokepoint often there will be only 1 civs territory on the other side of it, making it more difficult for other civs armies to get to you.

Not saying that it can't work, but it does have some limitations.

NOTE: OCC Deity is possible, but you have to not go to war with the AI (ie: continuously bribe them into other wars for the entire game)

 

[Tyxerxa]

It has severe limitations, yes. At the moment I try to go for a honor->piety variant on one city with Montezuma. Actually if you can funnel the AI into one choke point it sends unit after unit, especially if it has a tech advantage.

Eventually this could work on a duel map. Does anyone know, if the AI gets a bigger advantage on smaller maps. I want to gradually develop this tactic from cheesy (duel) to really working (standard & pangea).