Deity please! #2

[lymond]

Whew finally fixed...one last question, do you recommend using spoilers around images if there are a bunch of them to not clutter it up?

I always but each image individually in its own spoiler tag. Main reason is that I use the largest resolution on upload, so if you don't they throw the page out of whack.

edit: Your images look lovely, Mylene ...have you ever tried Blue Marble?

 

[lymond]

Okay...here's my report for 325AD:

Spoiler :

I seem to be in an okay situation at the moment. The good news is that my tech status is actually pretty good for now...at least for me. I don't think I've ever been at this stage of the game on deity and be in the driver's seat for Lib. I can finish Lib in 9 or less turns. The question is what to take. Zara grabbed Nat wicked early and already built The Taj. (I didn't really even notice he had Nat until The Taj announcement and I went bugged eyed). I liked to get Nat off him before Lib finishes so I can get MT to setup a Curs holocaust - maybe even on Zara himself. However, I would not be surprised if Mr. Zara goes for MT himself and he might already have it.

That not so good news is I don't really have a lot of land or power at the moment, although that not exactly abnormal on Deity.

Quickie summary:

Built Oracle
Built TGL
Built MoM
Close to Sistine (not critical but nice for denial of the culture whores)
Popped a GP early and surprisingly Theo/Christianity was up for grabs. Got me my own religion and some good trade bait. Unfortunately Zara built the AP even though I traded it much sooner to Jewish Gandhi/Lincoln in hopes they would build it.
Gandhi spread Judaism to all my cities. Very nice of him. I did not adopt though until I recently started my MoM golden age to run Caste/Pac. I wanted to run a religion/OR early but the diplo would have been pretty murky. Running no state actually kept me pleased with most and allowed for many trades and begs.

Monty goes into WHEOORN early. I figured it was me but he actually stupidly, as usual, declares on Church in 750BC. The war just ended last turn (320AD) with a not unexpected capping of Monty to Church. That's a mighty long war. I probably should have taken the opportunity to join in the fun with Praets, but was focused on other things. Monty's land is kind of awkward anyway. So I had a scout up near Church's border eating popcorn and watching the action. It's hilarious to see Monty suicide his huge stacks against Church's protective xbows/lbows and whatever. Monty stack's instantly disappeared like the Ninth Legion.

Anywho, I took Monarchy with Oracle. I usually go MC with IND leaders and it may actually have been a good call with gems and gold available. I might have actually completed some of the wonders I tried for earlier, but the fail gold was most helpful in keeping pace.

So the question is what to take with Lib and who to target. I think a Ren war is in order. No question I really need to let my cities grow for now. They are rather small now due to some generous whipping.

Gandhi would be an interesting choice to get his holy city and since he's a cupcake. I could probably get a peace treaty with Linc before attacking. However, I can probably take on Gandhi anytime. Zara only shares Hindu with Monty so he is kind of isolated in that since. He has a good bit of land and is the leader. Really my main competition although I expect Church will probably get stronger. I certainly don't want to deal with Church and Monty right now and Persia does not make logistical sense.

MT is within reach, but may not get Nat before I have to finish Lib. I will tech Lib to one turn as I monitor the tech advisor screen and see if I can pull it off. I do have Engineering, so maybe something like Chem would be nice. Steel would be a stretch methinks.


Caesar Lymond's Empire:

note: Ravenna is not a great site but has modest production. It was settled there so as to limit a culture war for the iron. I could put a lame city 1NE of the oasis above Jute that would grab some incense but help irrigate Jute. i would probably only do something like that if I take out Gandhi though. It would be crapsville.

Spoiler :

By eclarkdog at 2011-02-18

Rome:

Building the anti-Gandhi Sistine

Spoiler :

Cumae:

This city has been a perfect 2popwhip Praet city. Almost got me Parth and I built MoM all with overflow. I will irrigate that cottage tile.

Spoiler :

By eclarkdog at 2011-02-18

Neopolis:

This is my HE city...NOT I think this is the city Gkey wanted. It would be larger but I whipped in some culture buildings to blast Zara back. I should switch to a Unit now. Needs a market too. Chopping out the Library early here really helped matters.

Spoiler :

Jute (barb):

Yeah, I probably would have settled this to get the fish, but didn't feel like dealing with trying to get a settler back here. It's not that bad of a city actually.

Spoiler :

Diplo sich:

I had Church a pleased but Judaism as dropped overall points a bit. I can adopt FR now and other Fave civics and even go for a peaceful diplo win.

Spoiler :

By eclarkdog at 2011-02-18

Tech:

I've won on deity a few times, but I can't recall seeing it this good. Feels like IMM. Of course, all that can change VERY quickly.

Spoiler :

By eclarkdog at 2011-02-18

 

[Mylene]

Haven't tried Blue Marble Lymo, i'll check it out

Spoiler :

Good job on the wonders. Church and Zara are scary powerful already, hmmms.
Will be a hard fight to keep up with them, you will have to switch to production very soon to start building an army (preferable Knights, someone should trade you guilds i think).

If you can somehow get Chruch or Zara to declare war on each other, that would be a chance to backstab Zara with Curs.
Gandhi is an option also yea, but Zara's land so close to yours is soo tempting

Given the land you own, you might need Slavery instead of Caste.
Monty is a nice source of cash, deal him those old techs each time he has some gold.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Up to Turn 144 (680 AD)

Spoiler :

Great People
I received a Great Engineer for my second Great Person but it seemed a waste to rush-build The Great Library for an Industrial Leader with access to Marble, so I settled him in my Great Person Farm. This fact allowed me to build The National Epic there faster, as well as to later build The Colossus and The Hagia Sophia there--Wonders which the AIs seemed to be ignoring.

I received a Great Scientist right around the time that I was starting research on Education. However, Darius had already beaten me to Education and Liberalism, so I built an Academy in my Great Person Farm instead.

I also used a Great Engineer on The Taj Mahal, which will complete next turn (to be completed on Turn 145), thanks to getting Nationalism in trade from Gandhi for Education.

P.S. Don't forget to build your Forum (aka Market with +25% GPP) in your Great Person Farm! I'm currently running the jack-of-all-trades Specialists in my Great Person Farm, by running Slavery and hiring: 1 Engineer, 2 Merchants, 2 Scientists, and 1 Priest.


Wonders
I missed The Mausoleum of Maussollos by 1 turn to Zara and I missed out on The Parthenon by several turns to Churchill.

I did manage to build Angkor Wat "for fun," since I had Stone and I didn't manage to get Failure Gold from it before it completed.

I'll get The University of Sankore in 1 turn in my Great Person Farm.

Gandhi has been spamming Wonders, and will not make it easy to take them, having The Statue of Zeus, Chichen Itza, and The Apostolic Palace--the complete "anti-rush triad." He does have 2 Shrined Holy Cities, though, so he will make for a tempting target later on.


Wars
In 25 AD, Churchill declared war on Monte. On the next turn, he captured one of Monte's 4 Cities before I could react.
However, from there, things went downhill for England.

Monte, you see, has been hording huge stacks of units that he has desperated wanted to throw at me. However, he had foolishly Closed Borders with Zara almost immediately after getting Open Borders and has maintained Closed Borders ever since. I am glad that I am not Churchill, for Monte's masses of outdated units have just been spilling-over like there is no tomorrow.

Two turns later, Monte recaptured his City and took York.

Fearing for his life, Churchill bribed Zara into the war a few turns later.

Of course, I used Philosophy plus a pile of Gold to bribe Zara back out of the war! No way am I going to let Zara, the leader in terms of number of Cities, capitulate the most aggresive player in our game!

I don't know if the Event Log shows every City capture, but Monte ended up taking 4 of Churchill's Cities, including London.

Meanwhile, I snuck into Monte's homelands via Zara's Cultural Borders and took over Monte's The Pyramids City, Teotihuacan. With The Pyramids in hand, I simply held this City of Monte's and switched into Police State.

I'm glad that I did so, as things got a bit out of control... The Apostolic Palace voted for the war to declare war on Monte. Monte, using an AI-known bit of code, took advantage of the fact that if you declare Peace with ONE of the Apostolic-Palace-State-Religion-running aggressors in a war, even though another such player exists who is also at war with Monte (aka me--I'm running Buddhism, the Apostolic Palace religion, too), then the VOTE GETS CANCELLED. Yeah, it feels kind of goofy in one sense--there is still a Full Member at war with Monte--but in another sense, it is "fair" in that the victim can simply make peace with only 1 aggressor on the turn before the vote is executed (aka on the turn that the vote is cast), in order to avoid the world going to war with you. If I were in Monte's shoes, I'd be happy that the code works the way that it does--and it is nice that the AIs are strategically programmed to take advantage of this little-known fact.

Anyway, what happened was that Monte's troops got ejected from Churchill's borders... into the Cities that he'd captured from Churchill. Having gifted London back to Churchill as part of the peace treaty, that meant that Monte's stacks were in Churchill's ex-Cities that were on MY borders! Ooops!

Well, Monte captured one of my border Cities, but I managed to kill off all of the Jaguars, a Horse Archer, and an Axeman in another stack of units... leaving a stack of about 11 Catapults to sit there bombarding my City and wounding (but not killing) the defenders. Over time, a Combat I + Charge (+25% vs Siege units) Chariot took out the odd attacking Catapult, while the other Catapults would just retreat. It was pretty hilarious to watch.

Monte also suicided a good 20+ units on his ex-The-Pyramids-City... fortunately, I had Walls there plus several Praets and Axemen defending the City.

Once Monte appeared to have exhausted his unit supplies, I took his The Great Lighthouse coastal City (his capital) and have been pushing on towards his other Cities.

Churchill's London has so far Culturally-revolted all 3 of Monte's border Cities and I casually attacked from within Churchill's borders (being invinsible to counter-attack there). I have taken 2 of the 3 Cities in this manner and am about to take the 3rd one--York.

The downside is that these Cities are under intense Cultural pressure, so I had to whip the huge populations down in order to get some Cultural buildings up. The threat of revolt still exists, so I'll be forced to keep building Military Units and will garrison these Cities heavily.

Here you can see that I've got a couple of nice Wonders that are about to complete, including The Taj Mahal for a Golden Age that will help me to pump out a bunch of Universities without requiring much, if any, whipping.

Here's a view of the situation of Churchill's ex-Cities that are now Monte's ex-Cities, thanks to Churchill's Culture revolting the Cities, thereby making my attacks from within Churchill's borders (even across a River at York) work flawlessly. The image is highlighting Monte's remaining forces in York, which were damaged by a Revolt as well as my Catapults.

I'm not sure what to do about Monte--I'll probably just leave him alive with a City in the hope that the Apostolic Palace will have the world declare war on him, for additional Diplo points with everyone.


As for the next war target--I am TEMPTED to go after Churchill, but he has Musketmen now (which are actually easier to kill than are Macemen if you are using a primarily-Praetorian-based army)... we'll see.

Zara is the "big monster" of the game with the most Cities, but I will also be sharing a huge border with him, so I don't think that I'd want to get into a war with him without some kind of support--perhaps he can be convinced to declare war on Darius and then I can attack Zara a few turns later.


Recently, Darius has begun planning a war. Monte is his Worst Enemy, so I am not too concerned. Darius is taking way too long with his war preparations, though, so Monte will likely be down to a single City by the time that Darius attacks... or The Apostolic Palace could have declared a world war against Monte before then anyway.


A Western Continent
There is another continent to the west. The Barbs have 2 Cities there. It could make for a good Colony location, so I might, instead of attacking another AI immediately after Monte, try and take those Barb Cities and spawn a Colony. Certainly, a Deity-level AI will be a useful trading partner, particularly since only Churchill and Gandhi are willing to trade techs with me anymore (the others Fear that I am Becoming Too Advanced).


Build Items
Well, having recently picked up Education, my Cities have switched into University-building mode, which will co-incide perfectly with the completion of The Taj Mahal.

I think that I'll switch out of Police State and into Representation at the start of the Golden Age--I have a Heroic Epic City (the Cow + Rice + Gold location) that can focus on pumping out Macemen and Catapults, while the other Cities run Specialists and build Libraries.


Teching
With Liberalism already taken, I don't see much point in grabbing it myself anytime soon--maybe I can get it later for trade-bait, but as I said, most of the AIs aren't trading with me anymore anyway.

I'll get Divine Right next, since only a couple of the AIs know it and I wouldn't mind getting either Wonder, since we are Industrious and I have both Stone and Marble. Neither AI is saying "We have our reasons" as the reason for not wanting to trade Divine Right, which I look upon as an encouraging sign for me to possibly be able to get said Wonders. Actually, looking again, I barely control the Stone, so it's good that I'll be building a University in the Stone City, to help with the continued repelling of Zara's Cultural Borders there.

Here's the current tech situation:

 

[lymond]

BM is the graphics you see in my screenies. Basically works with most any mod. You can find it over on the BUG forum. I highly recommend BAT though for non forum games.

Spoiler :

Ha....I would but I agreed to stop relations with Monty a while back. I don't expect that too change soon but you never know with the RNG.

I was really surprised I got the TGL, even after trading away Aesths rather quickly. No seemed to want to go for it and once you give ole marbly JC a little advantage the wonder is his.

Oh yeah...Caste is just for the GA.

Yep...I definitely need to pull some tricks here. Every moment counts on Deity. I thought about building Knights too in order to have them ready to upgrade. Although an uphill battle, pulling off a war with Zara is probably more of a winning position.

Need to build some stables too. FR seems like the best choice at the end of the golden age.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

@Lymond

Spoiler :

I could put a lame city 1NE of the oasis above Jute that would grab some incense but help irrigate Jute. i would probably only do something like that if I take out Gandhi though. It would be crapsville.

Dude, may I suggest that you look a little closer at Jute? The Plains square 1SE of the Oasis can be Farmed immediately--there is no need for an additional junky City in order to get irrigation to Jute! If you really want a City near there, put it 3 squares west of Jute, to grab the Fish in its big fat cross (and possibly, if Gandhi's Culture isn't too oppressive, the Oasis itself).


Rome = Build a Lighthouse!
Even if you only work the Clam, that's a payback in a maximum of 60 turns.
Now, if you believe that 1 base Food = 2 base Hammers, then that's actually 30 turns.
Of course, with a Forge, the payback comes even sooner... even moreso with Organized Religion.
It also makes for a great 2-pop whip for overflow into a Wonder like, I don't know, the in-progress Sistine Chapel?

Image Uploads
I don't know what all of the fuss is about. Seriously, if a person is competent enough to figure out how to put [ IMG] and [ /IMG] tags around their image links, they can do the same with the images that they upload to CFC.

Where do you get the image URLs (image links) from, though? Well, in the Manage Attachments pop-up window, each image, after it is uploaded, will have a link appear on that page. Simply right-click on that link and choose the "Copy Link Location" or similar option--the wording is slightly different for different web browsers.

That's one half of the work done--that'll give you the bigger-sized images so that people don't have to click on the thumbnails just to see your images.

The other half of the work is that once you are done uploading your images, you simply need to position your cursor at the end of your message, just before the closing [ /SPOILER] tag. Then, click on the Manage Attachments icon (

) again. This time, you'll get a context-senstitive menu... if you want to change or view your attachments, you can select the Manage Attachments option. Otherwise, you get the option to click on the individual attachments... clicking on such an option will insert [ ATTACH]123456[ /ATTACH] tags into your message. These tags act as the reference location for each of your thumbnails... so, instead of your thumbnails automatically appearing at the end of the message, they will appear where the [ ATTACH]123456[ /ATTACH] tags are placed... and if you put them just before the closing [ /SPOILER] tag, then they'll still appear at the bottom of your message (essentially, out of the way) but they will appear INSIDE of the Spoiler tag. See my previous message for one such example.

To save time, instead of clicking on the name of each attachment, you can click on the Insert All option that appears when you click on the Manage Attachments icon (

) after having uploaded at least one file. Two tricks with using this option are:
1. Delete the spaces between the first 5 ATTACH tags, then leave one space after the 5th set of ATTACH tags but before the 6th set of ATTACH tags (is there are that many) and then delete the spaces between the remaining ATTACH tags. That way, the image thumbnails will appear with up to 5 images on the same row as each other, which is the default presentation of thumbnails on CFC... it just looks prettier and more "normal" if you take this extra step.

2. If you have also uploaded a saved game file, delete the corresponding ATTACH tags for that file--if you choose the Insert All option, the ATTACH tags are inserted in the same order that they are listed in the Manage Attachments list, so it's easy to figuire out which set of ATTACH tags go with which file. You CAN leave these ATTACH tags, but then you will just get a LINK to your file. If you instead let the forum automatically handle the saved game file link, then it will give you the standard-looking saved-game attachment link at the bottom of your message, complete with the handy download counter.

 

[Mylene]

@Dhoom

Spoiler :

Wow, that seems to be a fun fun fun game you have going there
Divine Right, are you sure about this? Looks like a gamble to me, the other guys and mainly Churchi are getting awefully close to Rifling, when that happens you would hardly be able to defend yourself. Do you think you can trade DR to someone for a tech that brings you closer to better units as well?
edit: whoops Churchill is weak in your game, my bad, but still i wouldn't like to spend time on DR in this situation

 

[lymond]

@Dhoom

Spoiler :

Yeah, actually I haven't really given Jute that much thought. Glad you pointed that out though. That city I mentioned was really an afterthought as I was writing my report and I didn't give it much thought.

On the other hand, not having a LH up in Rome is inexcusable. Sometimes the brain power required for Deity overtaxes my feeble mind.


That 3 city revolt/attack from English safe haven made me guffaw out loud. Monty occasionally gets to be a monster like in AZ game in the first of this series, but other times he is just pathetic. He actually was the aggressor against Church in my game and it did not go well for him. Unlike you, I failed to take advantage of the opportunity.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Whew finally fixed...one last question, do you recommend using spoilers around images if there are a bunch of them to not clutter it up?

I'd say that it depends upon the width of your screenshots. I play with a small resolution with the hopes that doing so speeds up the game, so I don't double-spoiler my images.

If you want to use super-wide images, though, then there are two approaches to take:
1. Embed a Spoiler tag around each image. Doing so can be a pain for people to view your images, though

2. Manually press Enter after each sentence and part-way through any really long sentence. That way, the text won't span the entire width of the screen. Normally, people's web browser will wrap the text, so you can type as much as you want on a single line. However, when a wide image gets thrown into the mix, then the wrapping algorithm won't wrap the text until it is off of the screen of the monitor of most people viewing your image.

Reading that text becomes particularly annoying, as horizontal back-and-forth scrolling is not a very fun way to read through a paragraph of text.

So, if you keep each line short enough, then none of the lines will need to be automatically word-wrapped and thus all of the text should be visible without needing to horizontally scroll back and forth.

If someone wants to horizontally scroll in order to see the right-edge of your image, they can do so, but they won't have to do so constantly for every line of text... and it'll be even slightly less horizontal scrolling to see the right of an image that isn't embedded in two layers of spoiler tags, since each spoiler tag takes up a tiny bit of horizontal screen real estate.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

@Mylene RE my game

Spoiler :

Wow, that seems to be a fun fun fun game you have going there

Yes, it is fun due to the pure insanity going on. Had Monte gotten Open Borders with Zara again, the built-up masses of units would have completely overwhelmed me.

Given sufficient time, and him not getting Open Borders I could have built a large enough stack of Praetorians in order to capture his Pyramids City and just held it--then weathered the storm for centuries... retreating if necessary into Zara's Cultural borders and temporarily giving up the City if I found a lot of my units were wounded. But, Churchill changed all of that and took on the brunt of Monte's forces... I didn't really see how many units Monte had as I was trying to keep out of the way, but it must have been huge mega-stacks, particularly given the large numbers of Jags that I have had to defend against in my Pyramids City and the large stack of Catapults plus other units that appeared just south of Churchill's borders when they declared Peace.


My Stats screen shows that I have killed 44 Jaguars and 17 Catapults!

Thankfully, Monte is one of those AIs with high "courage" levels, in that he'll throw stacks of units at a City even if he doesn't stand a large chance of winning... had I had to fight those units on "even terms," or even with small groups of them showing up at several of my Cities, I probably would have lost that war.

Divine Right, are you sure about this? Looks like a gamble to me, the other guys and mainly Churchi are getting awefully close to Rifling, when that happens you would hardly be able to defend yourself.

Rifling requires Printing Press and Replaceable Parts, and Gandhi only just learned Printing Press last turn. I'm not sure when Lincoln learned it, but it can't have been more than a couple of turns ago, since I have been keeping an eye on the tech screen relatively frequently.

Do you think you can trade DR to someone for a tech that brings you closer to better units as well?

Well, since I have The Apostolic Palace's Religion (Buddhism) in nearly every City, I have Buddhist Temples and Monasteries everywhere... and am about to complete The University of Sankore. It just seems fitting to round things out with The Spiral Minaret.

Versailles... while not necessary, is probably cheap enough to build.


My game is being played differently from a more traditional "get 6 Cities, Oxford, a tech lead, and then break out" kind of a game. I broke out early on with our Imperialistic Settler-spamming and then paid the price in terms of a slow tech pace.

There's no need for me to push quickly to a tech advantage... I jush finished trading Nationalism to Churchill for Engineering, for example, so it'll be a while before he goes after Military Tradition.

Maces + Praets + Cats + Trebs + Pikes should be fine against Maces + Longbowmen + Musketmen + Knights.


Sure, I COULD race for Military Tradition myself, but I think that the investment in The Spiral Minaret when you already have the Religious buildings in-place in many Cities (as opposed to not having said buildings or only having 6 Cities) will make for a worthwhile return on investment.

I'll have to wait a bit in order to be able to trade for Gunpowder anyway, so I'd rather self-tech Divine Right while I wait instead of being forced to self-tech Gunpowder.


In fact, after teching Divine Right, I'll probably go for 100% Gold for a while, until Oxford comes in. I'd rather not try for a Monopoly Tech (Military Tradition) before Oxford, if I can help it, as I'd like to be able to CONTINUE to maintain a tech lead. The sooner that you grab a Military Tech, the sooner that the AIs will get the same tech, so you need to be:
a) Prepared to spend a ton of Hammers (or Gold on upgrades) soon after researching the tech. For now, my Cities will be bogged-down with building Universities
AND
b) Prepared to tech to the next Military Tech soon thereafter (say, Cannons), so help deal with the fact that the AIs are starting to get to tech parity with your Military Techs. Waiting for Oxford should allow me this freedom, but spending all of my Gold reserves pre-Oxford seems like it would be a bit too short-term for me... perhaps this approach would be fine if I were going for a Conquest + Vassals game, but even then I'd rather have the ability to keep quickly teching to the next Military tech.

 

[Mylene]

1100, a big war started

Spoiler :

Not my fault at all, of course...i would never bribe Churchi to attack Lincoln so i have it easier!

Spoiler :

I had to. Zara peace vassaled to him, guess i scared him a bit
No way i could have accepted the culture pressure on my captured cities, i need to destroy Gondar

Spoiler :

...and Adulis

Spoiler :

Done! His culture is gone, and Zara can now live in...uuh...peace!

I have to think about what to do with Churchi now, iam thinking i'll just recover and gather troops for now, watch what he and his little boys do, and strike when iam ready.


Not worried much, cannons will do this and thanks to a Great Merchant and this Golden Age (~wuwu GP farm with the Pantheon) iam on a good way towards Infantry. Gandhi doesn't like him so it is unlikely he can bribe, and Darius is as dangerous as a bird on the roof

 

[Mylene]

Just a quick report on the war madness before i fall in my bed

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

This
The war statistics: ~20 Cavs and ~12 cannons lost, 24 Redcoats and a bunch of Monty Rifles killed.
And i have 1 worker left

Ole' Lincoln had my back, or at least he distracted Church long enough

 

[Mylene]

1260AD

Spoiler :

After peace was made with the angry Churchi, Monty foolishly cancelled his vassal deal with the weakened English.
It was time to show Featherhead what it means to attack Rome with Rifles.

Spoiler :

The weakling offered capitulation, blind with rage Mylene told her generals to send him away.
"Capture the big cities she said, raze the junk, and bring me his feathered head!"

Oh, and don't kill the workers, we might need some to build this strange thing they call "Railroads"... the smartypants of the Roman Empire think it will be useful. Geez, i'll just trust them with that!
And finish those Factories and Ironworks already, we are wasting time here.

 

[Mylene]

I stopped after taking out Monty and sitting at 19 cities.
It ends up to be sooo boring

Noone trades anything, all the peace pipe smokers won't go to war with anyone, i cannot make them stop trading or do *anything* to change this situation.

I could squeeze out some cheesy win via Diplo (i have twice the land compared to anyone else now), backstab Lincoln after he helped me, awesome, or take out Ghandi who is still running around with longbows and Knights (or at least i could have, no idea how much longer it will last).

No matter how i turn it, this is not worth the time. Sadly.

 

[GKey]

Impressive, Mylene.

I am currently at 680AD. Captured a couple of good cities from Zara including his cap. But I am horribly late in tech.
No idea what I do wrong.

Mids-Specialists economy fails me second time in a row.

AbsoluteZero, where are you?!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Update to approx 1000 AD

Spoiler :

Divine Right, are you sure about this? Looks like a gamble to me, the other guys and mainly Churchi are getting awefully close to Rifling, when that happens you would hardly be able to defend yourself. Do you think you can trade DR to someone for a tech that brings you closer to better units as well?

You are a very wise person!

I did indeed go for Divine Right and got The Spiral Minaret, as well as Failure Gold for Versailles. However, I also decided, based on your implication that I was taking the wrong tech path, to tech Military Tradition BEFORE waiting for Oxford University to come online.

I am very glad that I followed this advice!

The world, minus Churchill (who had had all of his Apostolic Palace Religion's Cities stolen by Monte) went to war against Monte due to the Apostolic Palace and me remaining at war with Monte.

However, Darius ALSO DECLARED WAR ON ME! Fortunately, I had a few Cuirrasiers around that I'd been building to attack Churchill with.

Also, fortunately, Darius attacked in silly locations--Monte's old The Pyramids location and just SE of Churchill's lands. I still had units near the Pyramids City location (the City SW of Monte's original capital), to keep Monte's ex-capital from Culturally flipping. I also had units near to the other City that he attacked by (my Stone City location, SE of Churchill's area), garrisoned in Cities on the border with London, to help keep those acquired-from-Monte Cities from flipping back to Churchill.

So, I was able to get Praets and Macemen into those Cities to defend, but really it was the Cuirassiers that helped to counter the stacks of Crossbowmen + Knights + Longbowmen + Trebs + War Elephants that were thrown at me... Cuirassiers plus Catapults + then my remaining forces attacked the wounded remaining units.

Darius did not have Rifling at the time but he has since learned it... yet, I followed some of his Longbowmen that RETREATED through Zara's lands... I killed most of them with Cuirassiers but decided to let the last one make it safely since it was already close to Darius' borders and I did not want to face off against his Riflemen.

Fortunately, there has been no since of any of those Riflemen making an OFFENSIVE move against me... if you beat off an AI's initial attack and they aren't a unit-spammer like Monte, you can often ignore them for a time... which is exaclty what I did.

I went up against Churchill. However, Churchill had Chemistry--which I traded from him for Military Tradition just before starting the war. Unfortunately, he also learned Military Science (for Grenadiers) just after the war started.

Spies and Cuirassiers and Trebuchets that could attack instead of bombarding did a great job against no-Fortification-bonus Grenadiers that had just been upgraded from other unit types (probably Crossbowmen) and Longbowmen, so I was able to capture London and another City or two, then Vassalize Churchill.


Monte was eliminated by Churchill (whom I bribed into war with Monte a few turns before attacking Churchill myself, hehe). So, now I have the Cultural pressure relieved from the northern part of Monte's Cities (Zara's Culture is still there to the south of them) and the Cultural pressure relieved from the Cities around London.


I also sent over some Maces and Trebs to capture the Barb Cities on the western continent... I razed one of them and replaced it with 2 Settlers, founding a Justinian Colony. It might have been a mistake, since his Research rate is dreadful--he started to research Hunting (I still don't know it yet) and I let him do so, because it was going to take him about 8 turns to get through the tech.

Oh well, at least the Cities are well-placed in order to get me some Corporation-based Resources, should I go that route.


Zara beat me to Versailles, so if I am daring to take on Darius, Zara would be a logical next choice to attack.


Gandhi, however, has 3 Holy Shrines plus a ton of Wonders, so it would be nice to capture his lands.


Lincoln is lagging in tech a bit and probably would make for a decent Vassal, so he'd be the most strategic choice to attack.


I'll probably let the war with Darius continue and then try and Vassalize Lincoln next, to be honest. If Lincoln "fears my enemies" too much, then I can always make peace with Darius, since Darius is offering 100 Gold plus around 9 Gold per Turn for Peace, after having taken out his two attacking stacks and his retreating Longbowmen with only about 4 Catapults and 4 other random units lost on my side of the fighting.


Unfortunately, I don't have any screenshots handy right now.


I really don't want to attack Darius' Riflemen-defended Cities next, and it's not like he has any really good Wonders worth capturing (he might not even have any) in my game, so he can sit and stew in his little corner of the world for now.


AI War Declarations
I honestly thought that if an AI went to war, such as via an Apostolic Palace Resolution, that they would give up on their previous war plans. However, Darius did not give up on his and he still declared war on me.

Am I wrong in my belief?

Maybe the code was changed for BtS?

Maybe it's just a BUG + BULL Mod thing, wherein BULL changes the behaviour of AI war declarations?


The Pyramids
I used Police State after I captured The Pyramids from Monte. During my single Golden Age (Taj-Mahal-induced), I ran Representation + Caste System + Pacifism.

When the Golden Age had 1 turn remaining, I switched back to Police State + Slavery + Organized Religion. I am happy for my decision, since it has allowed me to build a ton of Cuirassiers at the cost of somewhat delaying further tech progress... while also being able to complete more Universities and other buildings using Organized Religion... with my State Religion having been spread to every one of my Cities, it's a great Civic to run.

Since I haven't been running Representation, I have built 4 Academies and have settled only 1 Great Scientist. Perhaps it was a mistake, but every time that I had a tech to Lightbulb, at least one AI already knew it, for example Printing Press and Chemistry. Also, I had the chance to Lightbulb part of Education earlier, but Darius had already learned Liberalism, so there didn't seem to be much point, either.


Espionage
I spent about 5 turns' worth of Commerce on Espionage against Churchill (which is actually more like 10 turns' worth of Commerce, since I had to spend 5 turns making the Gold that was required to cover Maintenance Costs for the turns where I spent 100% of my Commerce on Espionage). Ultimately, it was too much, as he captiulated sooner than I thought that he would, but doing so allowed me to use Spies to take down his Cultural defenses and thus I ended the war after only about 6 or so turns, instead of my planned 20+ turns of war... in the end, I think that the tradeoff was worth it.

 

[Mylene]

@Dhoom nice story there

Iam not sure about the double DoW, i guess once they make up their mind whom to attack you can only stop it with a peace threaty. And yip, being too much behind in military techs is dangerous on this kind of map, where you sit in the middle of everyone (which was the challenge here imo).

 

[Mylene]

@Gkey I think the reason is that you don't have TGL or MoM, and not in Caste/Pacifsm to get the needed GS to bulb. This route is superior to the Mids with marble around imo.
Mids are strong when you have more time and stone closer than it is here (or when not playing Deity, lol )
Here the AI comes from all sides, good spots for rep. scientists are hard to grab, and just having one GP farm is better i guess.

And not having the gems online in the Capital from turn 25+ on also hurts imo, when the tech brokering train is gone, it's nearly impossible to catch up. One reason why i always turn it off in my own games, i can't stand that everyone can trade around techs he didn't research himself.

 

[GKey]

@Mylene
I got into tech brokering train with CoL from Oracle. Was fine for pretty long time. But in middle ages AI run away.

I got gems online right after second border pop - turn 36 or something. So that wasn't gamebreaker too.

IMO the problem is with high maintenance costs on deity. You are forced to cottage your cities to not go broke and then you can't both run specs+cottages+whip effectively.

TGL is nice and one of everyones favorites but I am not sure if it could change my situation critically. Got MoM from Zara (plus Parthenon, HGardens, GLH and some more). Game is not over regardless losing lib race and being behind in tech. Still can go MT and fight my way out. Just a bit uncomfortable and surprisingly thx to the Mids... These 3 happy from Rep really help though.

I'd like to watch some good deity SE game.

 

[GKey]

Quick update 800AD

Spoiler :

Zara vassal. Education in (800AD ). Could trade a bit but Lincoln and Darius WFYBTA. Price for these HA, Sailing trades early game.

When I almost completely owned Zara, Monty declared on him too, then 2 turns later Churchill called AP vote - stop fighting against Monty! Like anyone was fighting against him. But now I have to wait 8 turns before I declare on Monty. Must make it quickest war possible before another AP vote. Will try pull out Oxford meanwhile.

Zara in Buddhism, running Theocracy (and I run theocracy too, so cant switch him of it). I will try that trick, suggested in IC: gift him Hindu missionary, so he will spread it himself and I will convert him.

I've made super medic Woodsman III axe and 1 Supermace. Decided to settle rest 3 GGs in my HE city, might be best use of them with Representation.

11XP Units out of the gate with Theocracy.