Deity Challenge 7 - Montezuma-Pangea

[Light Cleric]

Spoiler :

Yeah, I'm noticing the biggest problem on this map is Persia being a giant douchebag. Darius DoWs me no matter WHAT I do. I don't ever expand to him but he always inevitably DoWs me no matter how big an army I have. He won't take bribes to attack other people. He completely ignores Austria attacking him in an effort to murder me(no, seriously, last time he got himself down to the smallest military in the game suiciding on me but I was fighting Rome as well so I couldn't capitalize). It's like he's only in the game to make me lose. I mean he and Rome keep settling crappy flatland cities into one another; one of them could have easily taken HALF of Caesar's cities, but instead he'd rather try to take a 24 defense city across a river while standing in a marsh getting shot up...

I can actually hold off a wall of Immortals and Composites pretty well, but it takes so much of my effort that I can't really do anything else, which gives Rome time to build up and attack me. This wouldn't be such a big issue if he didn't abuse the living crap out of the fact that you can't make the AI attack or move their troops, meaning that if I want to stop his Golden Age Immortals/Swords from positioning to slaughter my Composites in one go, *I* have to take a diplomatic hit and attack him preemptively. Persia in a Golden Age is brutal enough already, that just makes it stupid.

Of course, Rome DoWs me no matter what too, but he's MUCH easier to deal with and he does that in every single game anyway so I expect it

 

[Old Peter]

Spoiler :

Yeah, I'm noticing the biggest problem on this map is Persia being a giant douchebag. Darius DoWs me no matter WHAT I do. I don't ever expand to him but he always inevitably DoWs me no matter how big an army I have. He won't take bribes to attack other people. He completely ignores Austria attacking him in an effort to murder me(no, seriously, last time he got himself down to the smallest military in the game suiciding on me but I was fighting Rome as well so I couldn't capitalize). It's like he's only in the game to make me lose. I mean he and Rome keep settling crappy flatland cities into one another; one of them could have easily taken HALF of Caesar's cities, but instead he'd rather try to take a 24 defense city across a river while standing in a marsh getting shot up...

I can actually hold off a wall of Immortals and Composites pretty well, but it takes so much of my effort that I can't really do anything else, which gives Rome time to build up and attack me. This wouldn't be such a big issue if he didn't abuse the living crap out of the fact that you can't make the AI attack or move their troops, meaning that if I want to stop his Golden Age Immortals/Swords from positioning to slaughter my Composites in one go, *I* have to take a diplomatic hit and attack him preemptively. Persia in a Golden Age is brutal enough already, that just makes it stupid.

Of course, Rome DoWs me no matter what too, but he's MUCH easier to deal with and he does that in every single game anyway so I expect it

Exactly the same for me. What was amazing is that he couuld be in golden age 100 % of the time, how is that possible?

 

[Maxym]

I think I had a historical thingy pop up and remember him with 70s happy. His cap was size 28 in 120s but thanks to thinning him out early he was not a problem in 2nd war. I rarely if ever stuck my nose out of the jungle, and I was using jags not CB. I found Rome to more of an issue, maybe coz I dealt with Darius and left him alone.

 

[Light Cleric]

I think Austria broke the game client

Spoiler :

 

[Grendeldef]

Even thought after a comeback I still hate the game's little peculiarities I started the Monte game - the start looked awful enough so I could give it up without much of regrets if that'd be case.
Unlike as Kame I DoWed Rome @T12 to steal workers but managed only to get one to my own territory - Augustus was the only one I had met at that time. Bought a settler with first 500G and went SE - excellent location but a bit far. Build/bought archers & jags while teching to CB & IW. Persians didn't much care for me and when 1st immortal hugged my border I denounced him which was a bit too effective since he didn't DoW me at all even though I grabbed his land with a general. Rome was easy @T77 but didn't want to continue through the jungle.
Very late 4 city NC ~T95 after which I DoWed Darius partly out of boredom of waiting & partly because I wanted to save Augustus who was down to one city after being hammered by Austria & Persia. Took one his cities but going further would've been a suicide due to his GA so I took a couple luxes for peace & started hoping for growth due to unexpected happiness.
Hit industrial @T151 & managed PT but only RA with Nappy - currently friends with Bism & Dido. Maria hates me, Darius, Augustus are not not friendly at all & Celts are plotting againsts me but I have money for upgrades and/or factories as soon as get my coal mined.
Seems like a winnable situation but I don't know if I wanna continue with this.

 

[Light Cleric]

So I took a different approach this time around. I remembered Monty can be pretty amazing with Liberty because he can chew through culture to get to Collective Rule really fast. I cranked out a Jaguar + Archer and used them to gear Rome to settle more to the northwest as well as killing some Barbs to get my first Settler around t33. I promptly settled two cities near Rome and had plenty of cash to make a good standing Archer(and eventually Composite) army with so he didn't even try to attack me.

For religion I decided to take Messenger of the Gods because Stone Circles was taken and screw God of War. This helped me get a LOT of early science so I was able to neglect Education in favor of Machinery/Steel. I'm still doing fine in tech because I've gotten people to fight each other(Dido will DoW people for under 100 gold LOL).

Thankfully, I was FINALLY able to get Austria to go after Darius for me(it cost me a Wine but was WELL worth it). This enticed Rome to go after Darius as well, which, you know, left his flatland capital totally unguarded by anything but one Ballista.

Grabbed it on turn 77, screenshot is from a few turns later when he tried to come back to it and I smacked him down.

Spoiler :

Kept rolling and knocked him down to 1 city(thanks to his Statue of Zeus!). I saw Austria had taken Persipolis. It looked takable but she had Knights so I wanted to wait for Xbows. I hit Machinery, upgraded, and swooped in and grabbed Persipolis and kept it to have a launching point to Saltzburg + it had 4 Iron.

I've now pushed into Salzburg and getting ready to bombard it.

Spoiler :

Persia DoFed me after I attacked Austria(the mutual enemy +2 mod I guess) but with Pasargade right next to his capital I trust him about as far as I can throw him. Austria has started her CS marriage spam. I can take Salzburg relatively easily but I'm afraid if I try to push to Vienna I'm going to get swarmed by Austria's new CS units and Persia, not to mention Vienna has 28(!) pop so it's going to utterly wreck my happiness if I take it. I may go north to take out her CS cities; that lets me stay much closer to guard against a Persian attack and Salzburg is MUCH easier to defend than Vienna because I can just drop a citadel in front of it if need be.

This is still SUPER hard, though, wow.

 

[Grendeldef]

Something got over me so I just quickly finished this one by launching @T255. Quite late but it happens when one nukes neighbours for fun for overcharging oil. Not even remotely fastest way to win but I needed my revenge.

Darius eventually DoWed ~T165 so I only bought two factories & upgraded my xbows so Darius didn't touch my cities but only offered xp, culture & money later for peace which I gladly took since Maria DoWed me, too. Few bombers with oil bought from crappy Boudicca was enough. Closest oil I saw was near Vienna so I headed there with difficulties as ghost bombers were harvesting my troops. No planes in cities near enough but still got bombed - extremely funny especially as I was heading double digit negative happiness due to Darius & Boudicca buying my CSs.
As an additional bonus my oil deal ran out a turn before I could take Vienna so I had to buy oil again and this time the price was two luxes, 5 alu, 3 coal & some cash for 3 oil. Sellers market at that point. The fun continued when I took Vienna & and found out that Vienna's oil was now on German soil - apparently a recent GG visited borderline though no citadel on site nor were their at war. Germany had several oil resources but nothing sell. Ghost bombers disappeared after Vienna was taken so I took 3 more cities with artillery. Meanwhile I was building Apollo, Hubble & nationals on a 16 turn GA from Louvre - something to compensate the double digit unhappiness. At this point I decided to nuke everyone that wasn't my friend.
Rest of the turns was just shotting enemies while waiting for the parts. Didn't bother to plan the end too carefully so I had extra scientists but nothing major. Celts were hammering down the Germans so I had to DoW them in the end. Austria swapped few daughters for cities but too little too late and Darius somehow lost his momentum after the 2nd war with me.

Not the easiest game but not the hardest either as there's so much space to settle. Lack of iron wasn't an issue but lack of oil was and a big surprise as well. Had I know that earlier I would have settled on cost, probably taken the nearby gold.

I managed a pantheon without shrines as well as religion but never had more than two cities with it. Damn peeps didn't attack me enough so my only faith income was from CSs until very late.
Happiness was huge issue while advancing through Austria but the greatest obstacle was lack of oil. Obviously I could have ignored planes & gone for artillery but there was so much swamp & desert I was sure I'd had some. For that purpose I planted my academies on swamps as well.
Very different game from the Kame one but I admit that without some external incentive I'd skipped this kind start without a blink - I hate jungles.

--add.---

Crap, forgot policies. Tradition full ~T85, Patronage opener as a filler then full Rationalism and last was Order opener for some happiness.

 

[tommynt]

I started this untill turn 45 or so and when I had stolen 2 workers from both rome and persia and both were happy to offer peace i felt like this was going get too easy.

Rome had liturally nothing left and d have been an easy pushover.

Think I am done with singleplayer - every good and clever move does feel like abusing ai weaknesses only and playing - I never attack anyone style apart I try to kill them - is boring, bad and counterproductive when playing a civ like tecs.
I want be creative in strats and tactics but without real opponents who play to win this is really hard.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

i'm surprised it's taken you this long to come to that conclusion. your tactics roll over AI at all difficulties with no challenge. you dont need luxes for trade cuz you get all their gold in peace deals and you dont even need growth cuz you can take their cities with better spots and annex them. im guessing the worst map with scarce resources still isnt a challenge for you. the only way to make it a challenge would be to play without those tactics and you arent interested in doing that. so yeah, mp is the place for you if that's the only way you enjoy playing.

the only reason i dont like mp is because of the speed clicking required in combat. to me, that kind of strategy removes the turn-based part of the game. it certainly doesnt remove strategy but its why i dont play Starcraft games where APM is a necessity. my eyes and mouse accuracy arent very good so sp is the place for me.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

grendeldef, it's always interesting to me to see how the AI treats people differently. in all of my tries, Rome had those lands your cities are on settled by t30. I have no idea how you could settle so close to and around Rome the way you did without razing/replacing his cities. If that's what you did then cheers as well cuz I had a hard time against Rome every time. Once it was a simul-dow from Persia and once when I tried to take the offensive to Persia early, Rome back-doored me and took my cap. I tried using Austria to dow them but it didnt persuade them from DoWing me.

I might try Maxym's jaguar use early. I didnt build many of them for typical archers/comps plan.

 

[Grendeldef]

grendeldef, it's always interesting to me to see how the AI treats people differently. in all of my tries, Rome had those lands your cities are on settled by t30. I have no idea how you could settle so close to and around Rome the way you did without razing/replacing his cities. If that's what you did then cheers as well cuz I had a hard time against Rome every time.

Like I said, I think, I stole a worker from Rome ~T13 and left my spearman camping south of Rome helped with my 2nd scout so he didn't try expand that way before I had money to buy a settler. I killed few ballistae before settling the 2nd city. 3rd city again was settled as soon as I had money to buy a settler. With 3 cities surrounding Rome it was far easier to tickle him to come forward kill some units before taking Rome. 4th city was settled right after taking Rome and I had to buy a library there to continue NC which was already very late. Actually I teched IW for nothing because I didn't upgrade a single Jag before the war against Darius. My CBs though had cover as 2nd promo so they could survive a city+ballista combo so I only lost a single unit while taking Rome twice which resulted a 1 pop Rome - good for happiness but I'd prefer the 5 pop which it was on 1st go.
After I was done with Rome Augustus was visited by Darius & Maria out of which he never recovered. That left me in relative peace down south for a while. If I had to do it again I'd settle the 5th city on coastline to get chance for navy. Something to cover the gold & few fish. It would've been a boost to my religion as well since my cities were too far away & too populous.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

ive had a hard time stealing workers without losing the unit and giving it back. his workers were always around other units. a city shot and one from a unit is enough to take my warrior if i didnt pop a spear ruins. workers werent in the 3rd rung or wandering to cities that early for me, either.

 

[Light Cleric]

grendeldef, it's always interesting to me to see how the AI treats people differently. in all of my tries, Rome had those lands your cities are on settled by t30. I have no idea how you could settle so close to and around Rome the way you did without razing/replacing his cities. If that's what you did then cheers as well cuz I had a hard time against Rome every time. Once it was a simul-dow from Persia and once when I tried to take the offensive to Persia early, Rome back-doored me and took my cap. I tried using Austria to dow them but it didnt persuade them from DoWing me.

I might try Maxym's jaguar use early. I didnt build many of them for typical archers/comps plan.

Yes, Monty has a few quirks in his early game that make him interesting but a bit different than other civs. I rarely ever play him so it takes some getting used to.(actually got my first post-patch deity with him but haven't touched him since). Being able to churn some Settlers out early worked out really well, although I kind of wish I had gone Monument ->Jaguar.

I did skirt my usual rules a bit with this game. I don't like to take too much advantage of the AI but I did block the path of the first Roman Settler until he gave up and moved it up north. That's ALL I did, though, because it because it just feels so cheap to really exploit the AI too hard. I might as well just go all in and luxuries and GPT before I DoW them if I'm going to do that. :/ I only worker steal from a city-state and then make peace. If I see the AI send a settler somewhere I want, though, I WILL DoW them and steal it.

It makes for a much more interesting game if you let the AI get up and running a bit. Most games break down fundamentally in single-player if you bend over backwards to exploit every single AI flaw lol.

 

[Grendeldef]

ive had a hard time stealing workers without losing the unit and giving it back. his workers were always around other units. a city shot and one from a unit is enough to take my warrior if i didnt pop a spear ruins. workers werent in the 3rd rung or wandering to cities that early for me, either.

Yeah, doesn't work always but luckily AI does like to mine early so if an option grab a worker when the mine is ready for pillaging.
I reloaded few autosaves so these aren't from the key moments but from the x0s - I also reduced the quality but numbers should clearly visible.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

wow, interesting. thanks. im guessing because your spears were hanging out there before t30 he wouldnt send out a settler unescorted in that direction. in my games by t30 both of his cities were down and growing. my scout was still out hunting for ruins and CSs. i do try to have my jag back to my territory by about t25 to protect the workers from barbs.

 

[glory7]

I started this untill turn 45 or so and when I had stolen 2 workers from both rome and persia and both were happy to offer peace i felt like this was going get too easy.

Rome had liturally nothing left and d have been an easy pushover.

Think I am done with singleplayer - every good and clever move does feel like abusing ai weaknesses only and playing - I never attack anyone style apart I try to kill them - is boring, bad and counterproductive when playing a civ like tecs.
I want be creative in strats and tactics but without real opponents who play to win this is really hard.

I was a bit surprised to learn that you could do that worker-stealing and get fair or better peace deal from multiple civs at the deity level. I can do that at immortal or below, and sometimes can do it at the deity level for one civ, but not two.

I guess you are really good at finding weak spots of AIs. Any tips for the deity level aggresive playstyles?

 

[Old Peter]

I was a bit surprised to learn that you could do that worker-stealing and get fair or better peace deal from multiple civs at the deity level. I can do that at immortal or below, and sometimes can do it at the deity level for one civ, but not two.

I guess you are really good at finding weak spots of AIs. Any tips for the deity level aggresive playstyles?

I am very suprised too. Should not be possible.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

somehow missed yer post, Light Cleric. thanks. youve done surprisingly well when you dont max out the AI abuse. well done.

 

[dutchengineer]

Turn 200 - Game practically won



I had two early dofs with both Rome and Persia, which resulted in no wars before turn ~65.

I did a two city tradition NC build (finished at turn ~65), with two settlers waiting to build 2 cities immediately after that.

Both Rome and Persia backstabbed me in reaction. Played defensively while teching to steel + xbows. Made peace with Persia for one of their cities and killed Rome with my army.

Meanwhile, Austria, who was continuously at war with both Rome and Persia, killed Persia. After that, Maria DOW'ed me. We fought a long stalemate war: Everything she sent into my jungles was an easy prey for my longsword / musketman jaguar upgrades, while everything I sent into her borders was killed by her Hussars due to Himeji Castle + Great Wall.

So, I beelined artilery and killed her fairly easily with that. I probably won't continue further, it's now a matter of sniping all remaining player's capitals or hitting 50 times enter and launch my spaceship.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

wow, very nice, dutchengineer. that wall of color is awesome, haha. id be very surprised if you didnt win that but i'd play that out for the satisfaction. but then again i dont get these wins on deity, not with dom at least.