Deity Challenge 4

[RedRover57]

There have been a lot of threads lately regarding cultural victory and how it is more difficult than the other victory conditions, so it's time to put that to the test. You will be playing as Songhai on a standard pangaea map. Quick combat is the only setting different from the default, and no DLC are required.

Here is the start:

Spoiler :

A very average start. Nothing spectacular that's for sure.

The Challenge: Win by Cultural Victory.

Any strategy is fair game. Go tall? Go wide? Peaceful or warmongering? Liberty? Tradition? Honor? All up to you. It will be interesting to see if multiple strategies can work.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Yuck. Lacking on Deity usually makes for a rough game. Looks like a center start, too.

The good news is that you couldn't ask for a better leader for a -limited Cultural win.

Spoiler :

EDIT: Turn 19 Warrior rush. You have got to be kidding me. At least I saw it coming and screwed him out of 240. Jerk.

 

[RedRover57]

I wanted to play Songhai, but didn't want to give him a huge advantage since he is one of the top leaders. With Songhai I think there are multiple options available as far as strategy.

 

[snarzberry]

Looks like a pretty crappy, flat, low production start. cool! monastery at least. I'll give this a go tonight when I get home...

 

[Silverfuturist]

Excellent choice. I haven't done a culture victory since 2 patches ago. I look forward to the fastest winner describing their policy choices, in what order, and what their path down the tech tree looks like.

 

[Martin Alvito]

You get three guesses where I'm going from here, and the first two don't count.

Spoiler :

I am seriously irritated with Napoleon right now, but I'll repay the favor with Mandekalu soon enough. Nobunaga and I are both at war with him, and have a DoF. Between the Marble and the third Cotton, I should be good on . The other four Horses repatriate in about 20 turns - plenty of time.

With the delays from the stupid early war, there's almost certainly no way in hell I'll win the race. It's worth noting that Napoleon absolutely, positively will not make peace. The plan from here is NC in the capital and Chariot Archer spam in the second city. If I get a third early city, it'll be via .

 

[Sneaks]

Welp

Spoiler :

I settled my first 2 very similarly to Martin, and popped a third to the sweet spot to the SW with Wine, Sheep, Stone, Cotton, Cow in theoretic borders. Plus its on a riverside hill next to a mountain.

After exploring a bit, I have to say, this center position is a bit safer than I had thought. Lots of room to the west thanks to the CS wall. I am probably going to pop Legalism early for MPMs, then work on marching straight down Napoleons throat. Paris is just too pretty. 2 Silver, 3 stables resources, fish, and stone? I needs that.

 

[Martin Alvito]

The game is forcing me to play for the wrong victory type.

Spoiler :

Well, now I'm convinced that I'm boned on finish time. Cathy and Nobunaga decided to join in the fun. I fended off those zombie waves and slaughtered enough of Nappy's zombies to get a small bonus for peace. There was no way to squeeze a third city into the build order while fighting for my life and trying to get the NC up, so I stuck with the original two and their 8 Horses.

Got Chivalry on turn 90 via allying a Cultural and hard building MPMs to finish Liberty. I then mass upgraded and went south after Nobunaga's four Horses. After working that city and Tokyo, I got this screenshot:





Sadly, he wouldn't fork over any cities. So I've divided his empire in two like so:



The peace treaty with Nappy has been over for a few turns, and he's making motions like he's coming my way, so I think I'd better run the horde back up there for a bit after dealing with what Cathy has in the area. After I retaliate against Nappy, I'm going to have to start thinking about consolidating my southern holdings.

 

[Austere]

Hey, how do you get your screenshots to be .jpg? When I printscreen in Civ5 the files I get are .tga (?).

 

[Martin Alvito]

http://www.irfanview.com/

Any image converter will do, but the batch conversion settings in that one are useful. Once you get it set up, all you have to do is input the files and give the series a name, and it'll execute the same series of actions to all the files every time you use it. Comes in handy when you want to, say, resize and convert to .jpg format.

 

[Austere]

Awesome, thank you.

And thanks for the rundown, super useful!

 

[RedRover57]

Spoiler :

Two tries and both times I have been annihilated by Napoleon. The first time I settled in place, sent my warrior to scout to the south and sent my scout north, so I didn't see how close France was to the east. He DoWed me on turn 22 and sent more warriors than I could handle since my original warrior was still scouting and I didn't have archery yet. So that was over before turn 30. The second attempt I tried the city configuration that Martin used (settle the cotton then another city down by the marble). Napoleon didn't DoW me until turn 43 (after I sold him cotton and a turn or 2 after I settled the second city). I had 2 warriors and 4 archers (I had to rush buy 2 archers) and he still overwhelmed me with troops as he had horsemen, swords, warriors, spears, archers and chariot archers (2-3 of each!). I don't see how you guys could overcome that. He had even been at war with Oda previously, but apparently was none the worse for it. He must have kicked Oda's butt, got some ridiculous peace deal and rush bought all those troops because it was just silly.

 

[JustAnother]

Gives me runtime error when i try to load the save game , anyone has any idea? No problem with previous save games from RedRover

 

[puyo]

Wow France is great pain in this game!!!

Spoiler :

He declared war around turn 30 but I survived. I had to buy 2 chariots (for a total of 4) and here's what happened at turn 51:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=299028&stc=1&d=1313609741
Fortunately Japan was at war with them too

Spoiler :

Now 46 turns later :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=299029&stc=1&d=1313610137
Fortunately, I managed to have Japan with me... for now... because I'm turn 100 and I feel our relation will soon or late become strained....

 

[RD-BH]

No go.

Spoiler :

Napoleon DoW'd T23.
Held 'em off while building/buying to 4x warriors.
Napoleon retreated and sued for peace ... he wanted everything.
I refused and T60 he returned with swords and horsemen.
... game over.

2nd try ... no go.

Spoiler :

Decided to go chariots.
Had three chariots when DoW'd on T35.
Napoleon's 10x warriors and handful of archers made short work of chariots.
His troops were waiting in the fog every direction I retreated (N,W,S).
Lost the capitol T46.

3rd try ... no go.

Spoiler :

Decided to up hammers.
Beelined quarry >> stoneworks >> logging.
Had 6x warriors + GG + went honor.
Lost to swords and horses T70.

... next up SWORDS

4th try ... no go.

Spoiler :

Well y'all know how that went ...
On the other hand ...
... the best starting tech path is now obvious.

UNCLE!!!

Spoiler :

Non-stop war with Napoleon from T20 to T89 (Civ5 has stopped responding).

The only idea I have left ...
... build settler at pop 2
... gift buffer city to his rival

 

[RedRover57]

Frustrating!

Spoiler :

I loaded an earlier save from my last game (turn 44 right after Napoleon DoWed me) and this time bought several more archers. I managed to repel his attack only because of some poor strategy on his part. He could have easily defeated me and it was very close. I subsequently ended up having to rush buy walls in my second city a while later. During a short lull I was able to kill a barb camp for a culture CS and was also able to hook up resources in my 2nd city, so things were looking up. I built the NC in my capitol and kept on my path to get to Chivalry ASAP.

I spotted Cathy's troops heading toward me and bribed Oda to DoW her. This stopped her from DoWing me for about 10 turns. She eventually did DoW me but has not sent a single troop. In the meantime Napoleon continued with his relentless attacks. The screenshot above is where I currently stand. I just bribed Oda (yet again) to DoW France, but I doubt that will help. He hasn't really slowed Napoleon down all game. I'm one turn from finishing Liberty and bulbing Chivalry, but I only have 2 horsemen ready to upgrade to Mandekalu. I'm screwed if Napoleon plays with half a brain this time. All he has to do is bring the 2 pikes across the river to my capitol, kill the warrior with his LS (I had to sacrifice that warrior to kill a sword that was there), then he will have my capitol surrounded and I won't be able to stop him. So close.

 

[RedRover57]

@puyo

Spoiler :

How in the heck did you get Napoleon to give you that kind of a peace deal so quickly?!! He has never even offered me straight peace, and rightly so since he is much stronger even though I killed a lot of his troops. I must be playing a different game.

 

[puyo]

@RedRover57

Spoiler :

@puyo
How in the heck did you get Napoleon to give you that kind of a peace deal so quickly?!! He has never even offered me straight peace, and rightly so since he is much stronger even though I killed a lot of his troops. I must be playing a different game.

I don't know, he came two times and I full killed his units both, without any injuries for me since I get full range.
But maybe in my game Japan was doing a better job than in yours (even if he didn't take any of the french cities).

 

[Martin Alvito]

Spoiler :

It's pretty clear that Nobunaga's faring better than he did in anyone else's screenshots in Puyo's game. In mine he was fairly ineffectual, then backstabbed me. You can also see that Cathy got trashed in that game. In mine she's the unit leader in demographics; Harun is the guy who got drilled early on.

The problem in puyo's game is going to be cutting through all those Samurai. I hope he's been heavily promoting units along the open terrain path.

It looks like the issue with this map is that you effectively have two "continents". Diplomacy on this side of the city-state screen is a triangle, and you're likely to come out a loser by virtue of being 8th in soldiers until you hit Chivalry. Worse, Napoleon is right on your doorstep with plenty of expansion room, and the only way you're going to get a good early position is if he tangles with Nobunaga while fighting you and gets mauled.

 

[puyo]

Spoiler :

It's pretty clear that Nobunaga's faring better than he did in anyone else's screenshots in Puyo's game. In mine he was fairly ineffectual, then backstabbed me. You can also see that Cathy got trashed in that game. In mine she's the unit leader in demographics; Harun is the guy who got drilled early on.

The problem in puyo's game is going to be cutting through all those Samurai. I hope he's been heavily promoting units along the open terrain path.

It looks like the issue with this map is that you effectively have two "continents". Diplomacy on this side of the city-state screen is a triangle, and you're likely to come out a loser by virtue of being 8th in soldiers until you hit Chivalry. Worse, Napoleon is right on your doorstep with plenty of expansion room, and the only way you're going to get a good early position is if he tangles with Nobunaga while fighting you and gets mauled.

Yes I fear the moment when Japan will backstab me... I need to kill France quickly to prepare, plus Paris will give me Great wall which can be a good thing vs Japan. For now I sell some luxuries to Japan (a risk that could bacfire...) and repeat DoF.
And if Harun (or Japan) eliminates Catherine, maybe I can make Japan and Arabia fight for a moment... we'll see.