Emperor Challenge #2 - India, Pangea

[ekat2468]

I was going to post an easier version of Egypt, but everybody else was doing well, so decided against it. So here is your second challenge, and it will be nice for learning the power of a tall empire, although, 100 bonus point to anyone who achieves domination victory with positive happiness

Your Start:

Spoiler :

The map is Pangea, with all the other default settings, and of course on Emperor Difficulty.
Your Opponents:

Spoiler :

Nebuchadnezzar II
Haile Selassie
Attila
William
Kamehameha
Napolean
Harun Al-Rashid

A summary of India:
Population Growth: Double from number of cities, Half from
War Elephant: Replaces Chariot Archer, +14 / +30 , +3 , +1 , -1 , No Horses Required, No Rough Terrain Penalty
Mughal Fort: Replaces Castle, -10 +2 , +3 upon researching Flight

Required DLC: All of them (I forgot to disable DLC when creating the game, Sorry)

 

[digrosz]

Domination as India? That's just mean. I will probalby give it a shot anyway

 

[jeespoks]

Domination as India? That's just mean.

You're right, it's mean to your opponents You can clear the map with Elephants really quickly. I think it was Moriarte who did it in immortal challenge in 120 turns or so, so someone might do it on sub-T100 on emperor

 

[JohnPorno]

Im not a big fan of the start but ill see if I can do sth useful out of it.

 

[Optional]

I used to think the War Elephant was pretty terrible, but I've changed my mind. The Hunnic Horse Archer is awesome for lacking the rough terrain penalty, and you can't say the Horse Archer is fantastic and the War Elephant is bad, because they're too similar.
You may not be able to churn out War Elephants in high numbers, but still being able to shoot after having entered rough terrain is a big deal.
I was still using War Elephants up until the Industrial Age in a recent Immortal game. When attacking cities I was having Knights in the front line, and a mix of Crossbows and War Elephants behind it. The War Elephants didn't take more than maybe 10 hitpoints off per shot anymore, and attacking capitals had become difficult with them, but the AI puts a lot of smaller cities in, the elephants were still fine for that.

 

[nanomage]

Played until turn 65

Spoiler :

IMO, India's strength is the WE, and their UA is more of a mock to hinder early warmongering. WE is much better then standard issue CA or even Egyptian WC. I went tradition, secured the second pantheon for One with Nature and stole the Mt. Kailash from two city-states with my second city. DoW'd Nappy with 1spearman, 2archers, 1scout and 2WE's and captured his city of Orlean near Uluru. That gave me +21 fpt on 50-th turns, so I was quick to found hinduism, took Ceremonial Burial (I foresee mane puppets )and Holy Elephants. Added 2 more WE to the army and captured Paris on 65-th turn. Lost one archer.

 

[digrosz]

Played until turn 80.

Spoiler :

Declared war on Atilla on turn 60. I smashed his units off the planet with my 6 elephants and one warrior and took his cap. When my army was recovering, Napoleon (!) dow'ed me and took my cap. When i marched my army back, Attila retook his capital and it was game over. I don't know, I just seem to always fail at these early conquests.

 

[ekat2468]

During this game I hit 1000 hours of civilization 5 played I apparently have put a lot of time into this game.....

 

[nanomage]

played until turn 212

Spoiler :

This time I decided to play carefully, so I went with one elephant army and built a settler and some buildings instead of the second one. My elephants had a certaindelay against Honolulu (First I attacked from the wrong direction, and then Kamehaha got the GW up). Still, elephants ewre stomping until turn 171. Paris -> Addis Ababa -> Honolulu -> Atilla's court. Captured some wonders from Polynesia and Huns. I grabbed Aesthetics and soon all CS's in my half of the continent were my friends and then allies.
Got 3-city NC on turn 105, then settled the fourth. Later annexed 6 conquered cities.
My religion is the only one in the world - I killed off Ethiopen and Egyptian Hunnic ones, and noone else founded for some reason. Happines is ~50, I annexed all captured cities and never had to build a happiness building after the first Circus in Delhi (and pagodas)

Tried to take Mecca with elephants, but it's too late for them: they hardly place a dent on 45 strength city, so I had to deploy some artillery. Burned one Harun's crappy city and captured two others and Mecca.

A cakewalk so far, though it seems I'll have a rather late finish time. I'm still not good enough at getting that second army up and conquering something without crippling myself.

EDIT corrected a mistake

EDIT: Domination Victory turn 259:44 Happiness

Spoiler :

Well not much to add really,. Went on to finish Babylon and Netherlands, upgrading elephants to tanks and deploying bombers in process. Nebby had Pikes+crossbowmen, and William had just loads of trebuchets. When I declared on him, he said something like: "you know dude, there are other ways to win too". hehe

 

[digrosz]

played until turn 212

Spoiler :

This time I decided to play carefully, so I went with one elephant army and built a settler and some buildings instead of the second one. My elephants had a certaindelay against Honolulu (First I attacked from the wrong direction, and then Kamehaha got the GW up). Still, elephants ewre stomping until turn 171. Paris -> Addis Ababa -> Honolulu -> Atilla's court. Captured some wonders from Polynesia and Huns. I grabbed Aesthetics and soon all CS's in my half of the continent were my friends and then allies.
Got 3-city NC on turn 105, then settled the fourth. Later annexed 6 conquered cities.
My religion is the only one in the world - I killed off Ethiopen and Egyptian Hunnic ones, and noone else founded for some reason. Happines is ~50, I annexed all captured cities and never had to build a happiness building after the first Circus in Delhi (and pagodas)

Tried to take Mecca with elephants, but it's too late for them: they hardly place a dent on 45 strength city, so I had to deploy some artillery. Burned one Harun's crappy city and captured two others and Mecca.

A cakewalk so far, though it seems I'll have a rather late finish time. I'm still not good enough at getting that second army up and conquering something without crippling myself.

EDIT corrected a mistake

EDIT: Domination Victory turn 259:44 Happiness

Spoiler :

Well not much to add really,. Went on to finish Babylon and Netherlands, upgrading elephants to tanks and deploying bombers in process. Nebby had Pikes+crossbowmen, and William had just loads of trebuchets. When I declared on him, he said something like: "you know dude, there are other ways to win too". hehe

could you post a screenshot to prove it? Lol 44 happiness, I don't even manage to get that when I'm not even India...

 

[nanomage]

I'll try but all the screenshots I take turn all black in the mspaint. must be some directx issue.

EDIT: here it is, I figured out how to do it. Sorry it's the victory screen, so the happiness is blurred but visible, but I haven't anything else. I've already started a new game so I now only have the previous EC2 save, not the victory one. BTW thank you you gave me incentive to find out how screenshots work in CiV.

 

[nanomage]

Digrosz, some feedback regarding your game report:

Spoiler :

I believe you should have attacked Napoleon first. He's agressive, and he's a city spammer. I found Atilla to be muc more, erm, serene in my games: He just mostly sits in place, and whenever he tries to attack, he's got his Rams unable to melee and hindering his other forces. Besides, there are two citystates between you and atilla, so I figured he less likely to attack first.