Deity Challenge 2 - Byzantium, Continents

[beezany]

Based on the final social policy screenshot, I can tell that teino finished with 9 built/annexed cities and no Oracle or Sydney Opera House. The mini-map shows Byzantium and Russia each in control of an entire continent, so he had an extensive puppet network. Having played a few wide religion games, I know it's possible to have high happiness and gold with a strong religious civ. The only thing that looks inconsistent to me is that the final rate of 930 cpt is not nearly fast enough for a sub-200 finish: You need to maintain a 6-turn policy rate to finish all of the policies in time, and 930 cpt is only half that, a 12-turn pace. A golden age would make up some of the difference, and he may have let CS allies lapse, but that's still quite a gap between the final pace and the reported outcome.

 

[jeespoks]

Based on the final social policy screenshot, I can tell that teino finished with 9 built/annexed cities and no Oracle or Sydney Opera House. The mini-map shows Byzantium and Russia each in control of an entire continent, so he had an extensive puppet network. Having played a few wide religion games, I know it's possible to have high happiness and gold with a strong religious civ. The only thing that looks inconsistent to me is that the final rate of 930 cpt is not nearly fast enough for a sub-200 finish: You need to maintain a 6-turn policy rate to finish all of the policies in time, and 930 cpt is only half that, a 12-turn pace. A golden age would make up some of the difference, and he may have let CS allies lapse, but that's still quite a gap between the final pace and the reported outcome.

The happiness didn't bother me either but sub T200 Cultural win without using optimal policy order, Oracle or SoH and not using the gold at all as it seems, is a bit strange. Seems like he delayed the win on purpose

Anyway, I hope I'm wrong and he found out some new way to play cultural game but unfortunately his playthrough sounds like a fairy tale: getting Pottery and Writing from ruins, barbs not harassing, taking out a civ with a few archers, no need to use the gold etc

 

[ense7en]

commerce policies and I don't usually buy units/buildings also lots of puppets

Post your save please.

 

[Moriarte]

Post your save please.

No need. It's fake.

 

[Moriarte]

Based on the final social policy screenshot, I can tell that teino finished with 9 built/annexed cities and no Oracle or Sydney Opera House. The mini-map shows Byzantium and Russia each in control of an entire continent, so he had an extensive puppet network. Having played a few wide religion games, I know it's possible to have high happiness and gold with a strong religious civ. The only thing that looks inconsistent to me is that the final rate of 930 cpt is not nearly fast enough for a sub-200 finish: You need to maintain a 6-turn policy rate to finish all of the policies in time, and 930 cpt is only half that, a 12-turn pace. A golden age would make up some of the difference, and he may have let CS allies lapse, but that's still quite a gap between the final pace and the reported outcome.

930 is not an indication, btw. Usually, you disconnect artist specialists & landmarks while constructing Utopia, so CPT goes down considerably.

 

[teino]

The happiness didn't bother me either but sub T200 Cultural win without using optimal policy order, Oracle or SoH and not using the gold at all as it seems, is a bit strange. Seems like he delayed the win on purpose

Anyway, I hope I'm wrong and he found out some new way to play cultural game but unfortunately his playthrough sounds like a fairy tale: getting Pottery and Writing from ruins, barbs not harassing, taking out a civ with a few archers, no need to use the gold etc

didn't have the tech for Opera House and oracle got built by russia, killing pacal was done by surrounding his city with all units (so no archers at range) and moving them out of range when nearly dead to recover only lost 1 archer that way. Got a ton of gold while building the utopia, wasn't at war at the time also and while killing arabia and england i got gold from honor.

also, just because I was lucky to get a very good game doesn't mean i'm actually cheating. i restarted challenge 4 3 times already because i got crushed while trying to get the full tabarnak start going

 

[Unresolved]

edit: Oh yeah, I should probably say a little more about wonders....

Spoiler :

I'd decided not to go after Petra and to try for double GMoD and HS after the Oracle, which I got to help with the missionary spam out west. As I'd bribed Arabia to attack England and then DoWed them to get the CI, There was no competition for the Petra so I picked it up cheap! And also the TA late and cheap in my second city. I'd gone for astronomy first but was doing well in science so somehow still got both LToP and SC, then noticed no-one had gone for MP so got that in the 3rd city on the cheap too! Later saw no other suitable large cities on the map , really helped buy normal buildings. Had taken GE for help with TM and PT combo with hermitage, then caught my breath while fitting in the louvre somewhere. Didn't get any after that; buildings got expensive and the CR would have taken like 2 turns off even if I'd had a GE to hand; spent the hammers prebuilding utopia instead.

Stats before utopia build made me kill landmarks etc.: almost 600 science, 260ish gold (without trades), 1380 something culture, nearly 200 faith, cap size 31, nicaea 25, antioch 25, adrianople 24.

Not that I'm close to the deity level or anything, but how many GE's did you have in your game? I can't even fathom getting a T237 culture victory o-o.

 

[CanaDutch]

I haven't tried to go for a cultural victory while waging lots of wars, but it seems to me that the reason why Teino's culture output was so high is because he puppeted so many cities and especially taking over the Mayans so easily got the ball rolling.

I could be wrong, but so far I only see people talking about peaceful cultural games with only 4 cities, with no-one trying to puppet as many cities as possible while not sacrificing the most important builds (and using honor to make this much easier). Since religion is so viable on this map, it actually makes sense to puppet many cities as happiness is hardly a problem.

It's clearly much easier to blindly follow than to experiment with strategies that deviate from the norm.

 

[tommynt]

I could be wrong, but so far I only see people talking about peaceful cultural games with only 4 cities, with no-one trying to puppet as many cities as possible while not sacrificing the most important builds (and using honor to make this much easier). Since religion is so viable on this map, it actually makes sense to puppet many cities as happiness is hardly a problem.

I do puppet quite some in all my very fast finish time games (usually with few own built units but with from mcs ones), puppetting and also getting money for peace deals from ai is a huge income source and gold is allways needed, still ...

 

[Moriarte]

It's clearly much easier to blindly follow than to experiment with strategies that deviate from the norm.

Most important is not to deviate from common sense..

Most efficient games will come with puppets, obviously. Yet you can't finish fast without freedom. (because you can't reach really high cpt without it) And without high cpt there can't be sub 200 win. There was a gotm game were tommynt did 226. He had 1500 cpt in his game.

Now follow this link and compare teino's screenshot with tommy's screenshot in terms of cost of last policy and you'll see what's wrong .

 

[tommynt]

Now follow this link and compare teino's screenshot with tommy's screenshot in terms of cost of last policy and you'll see what's wrong .

yeah this game went pretty good for me, and even when the land in this game here looks way more suited for cult win I doubt it helps so much to be lot faster.

In end I had acces to a really high pop cap with 2 wheats early on and lot of river (even when all plains defintly isnt what you want) and this perfect spoted petra city.

I just cant stress how important CS, espacially cultural ones, are and with a map where only 6 are accesable early on and only 1 of em being cult I cant see record breaking wins here

 

[CanaDutch]

Most important is not to deviate from common sense..

Most efficient games will come with puppets, obviously. Yet you can't finish fast without freedom. (because you can't reach really high cpt without it) And without high cpt there can't be sub 200 win. There was a gotm game were tommynt did 226. He had 1500 cpt in his game.

Now follow this link and compare teino's screenshot with tommy's screenshot in terms of cost of last policy and you'll see what's wrong .

Lol, it is rather suspicious that Teino finished so fast when the last policy costs 5000 more culture for him. Perhaps he used a mod, which wouldn't be cheating, technically.

And yeah, common sense isn't commonly practiced . Civ 5 has been out for so long, that I'd be surprised if someone would find a radically better strategy to win a cultural victory at his point, especially when that strategy doesn't make sense .

 

[beezany]

930 is not an indication, btw. Usually, you disconnect artist specialists & landmarks while constructing Utopia, so CPT goes down considerably.

Right, I figured it would be less than the peak culture production. However, comparing apples to apples (tommynt's CV226 win): He somehow shaved 30 turns off the win despite producing ~30% less culture against 50% higher costs. It might not be damning, but it's fishy, and without a walkthrough or save it's not instructive. I'm adding a note to the victory log that this game is contested.

 

[Arilian]

I do not know, If I was just super unlucky, but despite having a faith wonder and godess of festivalas, not only I was beaten by relegion, by two civs, BUT BOTH OF THEM ENHNACED THEIR RELIGION (at turn 49 and 5x!!!) before I even got one, taking spread +30distance and +38% speed.
so I rage quit

After this just game, just out of curiousiry, I have started another game in Emparor, and ICCs with this civ, taking Mosques, Catherdals, Pagodas, as religion, at is is really fun. After 10 city, if you make another one (choosen terra as map to be sure I have space) I have 120+faith/turn, gives me enough happy to plant a city in every 6 turn...

 

[Light Cleric]

So here's a thing(little long so I included screenshots for a tl;dr version lol). I experimented with some things this game so it's not been optimal but it has been fun.

Spoiler :

So long story short, I lost some data including Civ V saves so I had to restart everything I was working on from scratch

It was interesting because this game played out differently. England went Hostile on turn 3 and denounced me on turn 8 as she is wont to do. Maya and Germany both coveted my lands. I noticed the Maya hadn't hit Composites yet but I had so I went and beat up on him and was able to get his capital around turn 100 and Tikal a bit after that. I was able to nab the Oracle and that let me spring into Honor. I decided to experiment a bit and forego finishing Tradition in order to blow through right-side Honor and actually got to Professional Army in time for Machinery. That's also why my NC is so late.

About this time Arabia DoWed me(my spy told me it was coming) but he was on the other side of the map so all I ever saw was 1 Pikeman come at me.

After a little respite to deal with my actual infrastructure building, I went up north and fought a long, tough fight with Germany. I was finally able to break through his spam(it IS Germany after all) and take Berlin on 186. I took a calculated risk and went for Dynamite instead of Flight because since even runaway Cathy wasn't in the Modern yet, the other civs probably weren't close either. I took my Artillery and marched north to take out another German city and made peace with him to focus on Arabia. Hit Flight in the meantime and bought some planes which helped chip through his Artillery. I kept rolling and took his York puppet(which pre-made oil wells, thanks!), Basra, and Baghdad in quick succession after breaking his Artillery spam but had to settle for a nice peace deal because Medina was guarded by Battleships that trashed my Artillery.

I decided the solution was to push for Rocket Artillery, and I got there quite fast because I had several Great Scientists and a leftover RA from Ethiopia. I decided just to hit Satellites while I was right there and was able to get Hubble with faith-bought GEs because I wanted to stop Cathy from getting it. As I did this, Arabia+Russia DoWed Germany so I caught Arabia with his pants down and went through Medina/Damascus/Meccca in 4 turns because Rocket Artillery are AMAZING.

So here's where I stand: I can cruise to a Science Victory pretty easily now, but I want to take down Cathy's capital, but that's going to be insanely hard. Going to pack some Nuclear Missiles on Missile Cruisers and try to blow her up the same turn I attack England(If I do that now everyone will hate me and I'll lose my only two trading partners).

I saw some people before ask about mid-game screenshots etc. so here's some

Turn 101 Again Oracle delayed NC.
Turn 186
Turn 222 trading that city over and over while I chip his Artillery
Current situation, Turn 270

Question for Old Peter: how many nukes did you have to drop on Cathy? I'm not sure I have enough

 

[jeespoks]

Domination victory T251

Spoiler :

Finally managed to find time to finish this game. I took Berlin with GW Bombers around T200. Bismarck was left with one city and he kept England busy with it for the rest of the game. Meanwhile England took Arabia's last city.

I went after Haile with Battleships while building Carriers and more GW Bombers. The war vs Ethiopia started T210 and went only for 6 turns. My 12 Battleships killed 34 of Haile's units, 7 of his CS allies' units (yes, I actually counted them ) and wore down his capital during those 6 turns. Those Battleships were just plain overpowering. Didn't lose any units vs Haile. I was going to take a few more of his cities but he made an offer I couldn't refuse: over 1k gold, 64gpt and all his resources

With all the gold I had I could upgrade my 10 or so Knights eventually to Tanks and later to Modern Armor. I DoW'd Russia T231. She had a lot of units. I spent 20 turns killing them and taking her cities. Managed to liberate two Mercantile CSs and took Amsterdam meanwhile too. Finally the Stealth was researced and I took Moscow qucikly with Stealth Bombers.

I should've gone after Russia earlier and straight to Moscow, it could've been taken withouth Stealth Bombers, had around 10 Modern Armors, a few Helicopters and a lot of Battleships and Destroyers. Lost only a one unit, a Carrier vs Cathy. Maybe I was too careful not to lose my units and went too slowly towards Moscow but overall I'm very satisfied the result anyway.

Congratz to all winners and especially to Crafty Bison for the T238 Cultural victory, nice job!

 

[Tabarnak]

Awesome game Crafty Bison!

Sounds like a cheater is around here. Like one said, maybe he's using mods but i doubt. You can't add a mod to an already existing game.

He refuses to let a savefile. That says a lot.

 

[Moriarte]

You can't add a mod to an already existing game

Sure you can. Activate in game editor (IGE) and load up any game .

 

[Tabarnak]

Sure you can. Activate in game editor (IGE) and load up any game .

So civ5 is different than civ4 in this domain. Meh i don't use mods. My bad.

 

[OzymandiasDK]

Domination victory T233.
Congratulations to all winners of this quite challenging map.