Deity Challenge 7 - Montezuma-Pangea

[Maxym]

It's very humbling to see some top players steamroll through a map you are barely hanging on on. I enjoyed the write-ups, especially "as ghost bombers were harvesting my troops. " I could not get it out of my head all day, and I think I wont call them anything else but ghost bombers.

I decided to take on Austria, so I saved in case it won't work out and will try peaceful approach then without replaying from scratch. At least this way will be quicker as she will kill me fast if I can't take Vienna before ghost bombers do me in. I am not a deity level player and usually just hang in there to the bitter end, which tends to be very late. Most of my high scoring deity games are actually defeats, lol.

Awesome game Light Cleric, I might follow your template if I do replay. If you are not pass that point yet, I would push on from Salzburg to Vienna. I will do the same but heed to take one more city as in my game MP is in Graz south of Vienna. I hope that will be enough to get peace.

I have a question for you guys: when you take over Austrian CS she married, do you get a chance to liberate it or is it permanently hers?

 

[Moriarte]

Permanenty.

 

[jeespoks]

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.

Wow, I had no idea you can do that and get away with a deal. Tbh I've sometimes even hesitated stealing a CS worker just not to upset the AI at the beginning

A few free workers at the start should be helpful

 

[peddroelm]

Wow, I had no idea you can do that and get away with a deal. Tbh I've sometimes even hesitated stealing a CS worker just not to upset the AI at the beginning

A few free workers at the start should be helpful

its free early workers + money when they beg for peace later

 

[trueblue]

It's on. Monty is my fav for deity. I am a great fan of free culture and, if you can get them there, infantry that heals as bombers die over head.

 

[Moriarte]

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?

Jags are strong in demographics. Guess he had more than a few early on .

 

[Light Cleric]

Awesome game Light Cleric, I might follow your template if I do replay. If you are not pass that point yet, I would push on from Salzburg to Vienna. I will do the same but heed to take one more city as in my game MP is in Graz south of Vienna. I hope that will be enough to get peace.

Thanks but it's not over yet. Probably better to learn from the other people who know what they're doing better than I do.

I did push in and take Vienna with minimal losses. As soon as I did I saw Persia moving troops up to my border and I rushed some troops back because I smelled a backstab. Sure enough a couple turns later he backstabbed and pushed at Pasargadae, but I dropped a Citadel and held him off pretty easily. He picked a pretty bad time to do it.

Spoiler :

Anyway long story short I took the Great Wall from Golden Age boosted Persia with Cannons. Yeah, it sucked. It really sucked.

But all those wonders

Spoiler :

Got a nice peace deal from Darius because I just couldn't muster pushing into one of his remaining cities with what I had left.

I'm a little behind on tech because my beakers had kinda lagged behind, but they really spiked once Vienna got out of resistance and I got the rest of my Universities filled and I have an RA firing with Dido this turn. Speaking of Dido she's pretty amazing, she's DoWed Austria twice and Germany four times for me, each time for less than 100 gold which is amazing. This really helped me keep pace with Germany who normally likes to run away with tech. Will probably go for Flight next while I try to get Ironworks and Factories because the one problem with this map is the lack of production lol.

 

[Maxym]

I guess that's a bonus for keeping Darius around longer. He had a fair bit even though he left the game early for me.

I am not sure if I can emulate Dutchengineer or Grandeldef as there seems very little room for error in their games. I like the way you have played it.

I have rethought my approach after playing more last nite, Maria had her first ghost bomber at t 171, so that's it for my arty rush plan. I will go back and try the peaceful approach with an Ender finish. I decided I can't take her on directly or even sneak in a science or diplo, especially diplo as there are only 3CS left, she has them all. Everyone is friendly though, maybe I could get 4 votes, including hers. Germany hates my but he has only 3 cities and fighting on four fronts, so maybe 10 turns left.

So here is my plan, get her to do all the work as I tech for either nukes or stealth, prolly nukes. Then once she has all the caps, swoop in and take Vienna. Game over. I do need to survive long enough for that though. Maybe I should stop stealing her tech, if she turns on me I am dead. I have not been able to pay her to DOW anyone, including her next target. She has her mind set, i offer all I got for DoW on Bismarck and she refuses then Dows a turn later, same with Rome before.

 

[EEE_BOY]

I think majority players who managed this map went ancher units for early war. Guess it is a must in diety now.

 

[Maxym]

I think majority players who managed this map went ancher units for early war. Guess it is a must in diety now.

i think so , i found myself able to slaughter anyone in jungles but could not take any cities, well a few but not caps, and relied on Maria to do the heavy lifting. It worked out but now i have a 3000lb gorilla on my hands. It has made the rest of the game very exciting and an outcome uncertain.

I think few jags were helpful. I was expectig constant war, as is my usual experienc eon deity, instead i have a super prpmoted muskets and nothing for them to do and no extra culture coming in. I might send them to fight beside Maria whomever she targets next to extra culture and maybe snipe a city or two.

Did you try it EEE, you useally do well iin those.

 

[EEE_BOY]

I tried to defend with mass Jags to get them promoted and war with late artillary units but failed miserably. and I want to wait for a while before I tried this map again, so that the map knowledge fades a little.

 

[Old Peter]

I think majority players who managed this map went ancher units for early war. Guess it is a must in diety now.

Hmm, why is that? Back in the early days I always did mostly archer units. Nowdays I do more melee than ever. My fav unit is actually Cavalry, there is no unit I fight more with that this. I used to hate all horse units before.

 

[Old Peter]

A few days ago I finished this one. No gold loans or cheating, but how can anyone prove that, exept for recording? So I am not as eager to be impressed by good results from anyone nowdays. I hope for a patch to fix this "goldloans-before-war-thing".

Anyway, I could not bribe persia, and fought him with jaguars, citadels and forts. Tried to place citadels in the corners to make him fight me in the jungle. Then building lots of cavalry, artillery. After turn 150 or so the map became very easy for some reason.

I had the full honor tree, and was early with military tradition. A ton of units got logistics.

 

[Grendeldef]

I hope for a patch to fix this "goldloans-before-war-thing".

You're not alone with this wish but apparently the developers doesn't seem to share the view. I think there was a reasonably active thread about this with several suggestions for improvements which shouldn't be too hard to implement if so want.
Recording everything seems overkill even to prove a point - there's no money involved so one has to have some trust on fellow gamers and assume that if trade & DoW exploit is used it's also mentioned.
In the short lived but otherwise excellent Total Domination challenges started by Snarzberry he set a simple set of rules which are easy enough follow 1) no trade & DoW and 2) no mods that affect the save file. Seems still like a good guideline for all public games here.

What comes to unit preferences I'm all for ranged - half of the time I don't even bother building proper meat shields. Horse units are needed for capping cities but rarely anything else but Conquistador's visibility is a huge plus. It seems that my approach towards war is violently different than Mr Old Peter's but then again I haven't played for months and I'm more of a builder than warmonger. Unfortunately warmongering is very effective compared to just building stuff.

I think I might give a try with the earlier challenges as well as I recall that the Swedes had an awful map.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

for me, these are for personal satisfaction. i take it all with a grain of salt. i honestly have zero reason to impress people. but if i played at a certain level of skill i'd probably be tempted to brag about it. im glad you got your win and that this was a legitimately hard map for most of us. i was worried that it would be an 'easy' deity map but just very hard for me, haha.

and that screenies is impressive. 1k gpt not in a GA is awesome.

edit: and i'd need an actual game design representative to address these things specifically for me to think they actually dont mind these exploits. they'd need to actually have a forum presence here and a few other places to quell the assumptions. they give vague press releases or hollow interviews but never any specificity. i have little faith that they are actually that solid in the programming to think it is justifiable. to me it is just stuff they dont want to fix cuz only a small percentage use them.

 

[EEE_BOY]

Hmm, why is that? Back in the early days I always did mostly archer units. Nowdays I do more melee than ever. My fav unit is actually Cavalry, there is no unit I fight more with that this. I used to hate all horse units before.

horse melee gunpower are different units. what I specifially referring to is archer line units for either defence or offence early in the game. calvary is good but too late.

 

[Moriarte]

Peter, i don't understand how you avoid rationalism, go for full honor and still able to tech at reasonable rate to unlock artilleries in (say) 150'ies. Or do you go honor after 2 in rationalism? Seriously, in that type of game, i am aiming to fill rationalism quickly to use it's two techs to get some decisive military advantage (like rocket artilleries). Sometimes it's order opener, for more happiness, or autocracy, or whatever. I just don't see full honor fit in anywhere.. could you enlighten me?

 

[jeespoks]

Peter, i don't understand how you avoid rationalism, go for full honor and still able to tech at reasonable rate to unlock artilleries in (say) 150'ies. Or do you go honor after 2 in rationalism? Seriously, in that type of game, i am aiming to fill rationalism quickly to use it's two techs to get some decisive military advantage (like rocket artilleries). Sometimes it's order opener, for more happiness, or autocracy, or whatever. I just don't see full honor fit in anywhere.. could you enlighten me?

Nice Domination victory again, Peter, congratz.

Like Moriarte, I'd be also interested to hear more about your strategies, especially on this map since you mentioned going full Honor. Military Trad is extremely useful and that's what I'm also aiming for but after that I must get Order opening because of all the unhappy faces or Rationalism opening if I can solve my happiness probs in time.

 

[Light Cleric]

I think he mentioned in his Sweden game that he filled did go some into Rationalism while filling out Honor, and that's what I usually do when I go Honor, although I rarely ever finish the actual Honor tree.

 

[Old Peter]

This is how it looked like when I choosed policy at turn 198. I did actually do the rationalism tree some. Question at this specific point is Secularism or Humanism? What would you have choosen?