[Vanilla] Finally won with Catherine on Immortal...

[Anysense]

When I finally did get to Cossacks, I could see that I might be able to take these two cities and go from there but it was pointless because I was that much further behind in tech as Mansa Musa built the Apollo Program at the same time.

Cossacks might be strong but it seems to me they come too late in a Deity game to really take advantage of.

The first Apollo Program is usually built in 15xx. If you get military tradition about 1500 AD then you definitely do something wrong. With the average starting conditions, MT is normally researched somewhere between 300 AD and 800 AD.
As you haven't posted saves or screenshots, it's impossible to say where exactly you went wrong. If you really want to learn, sharing a game is the way to go.

 

[BLtheKid]

Well, I must be missing something (although I don't know what). When I was repeatedly trying to win with Culture (again, 17 of those type games on Vanilla Deity), of course I was building as many cottages as I reasonably could as I tried to get to Liberalism and I am pretty sure I never got there before 1100 AD at the absolute earliest. And, MT is at least far (I think farther) along the tech curve, so not sure how anyone gets there so early.

The only thing I could see doing is posting move by move and taking suggestions on what to do but that seems like an endless process that would be incredibly time-consuming. And unfortunately, no one has ever previously posted a Catherine win on Vanilla Deity so nothing to examine from the past, either.

Which leaders are similar to Catherine - in that they aren't overall any stronger and get any applicable UUs at least as late in the game, making early rushes at least as unlikely? Maybe someone has done a write-up on one of those in the past.

 

[lymond]

Well, GoG's sale ends today, so you better hurry

Hard for most of us to give you advice on vanilla anything. I'd say Qin is probably pretty strong leader, and Gandhi.

Part of your issue may likely be due to great person generation and how you use them. Again, we have not seen one of you games to know what is going on.

Anysense's timings seem reasonable for BTS, but not sure about Vanilla, although I did something similar in a recent game on Warlords. But both Warlords and Vanilla have some limitations, especially with the power of Golden Ages and turning hammers into wealth/research.

Vanilla write-ups? Probably buried very deep. As I mentioned before, you could check the HOF for old vanilla games. At least you can download the saves. Other than the occasional GOTM, it's been 10 years or more since anyone has really focused on Vanilla.

Again, you'd really do yourself a service playing BTS, so you can benefit from it and the advice of folks here. Otherwise, it's really apples and oranges and there is not much we can give you.

 

[BLtheKid]

I did have to use three or four GP on Artists because I got my fourth city crammed in between two rival Civs and there were resources there I needed to keep in my territory. I had a couple of GS that I turned into Academies.

The more I read the occasional thread on Vanilla Deity vs BTS Deity it seems Vanilla at that level is much harder. Which leaves me to wonder why those who have conquered BTS don't ever wish to attempt a harder challenge. Maybe way too hard for nearly everyone?

I did look at the HOF previously as you suggested but I don't think there were any games with the basic parameters that I listed (there was always a different type of speed or number of AIs or whatever.

Ideally, there would be something on YouTube - those seem easiest to follow - but again, nothing there that really matches what I'm looking for.

I may just take a step back to Immortal (I'm at this point not convinced Deity is beatable beyond the very occasional win (at the most) with Catherine and the neutral parameters I've chosen) and just keep adding additional AIs to make it a little harder. So, next game I'll play with 9 total Civs instead of 8 and see what happens.

 

[BLtheKid]

So, it took me four tries but I got my first win on Immortal with 9 total Civs. In two of the first three games that I didn't win I had stone nearby (once right in Moscow) and built the Pyramids (I don't think I ever built them on any of my previous games working up to Immortal). In one of the games, I was able to build maybe five wonders with the help of the GEs that I got. I was going to go for a Space Race win but even with some pretty good games I eventually fell behind in tech. One game was looking halfway decent until I discovered Saladin as the 9th Civ relatively late in the game, only to find him to be more advanced than everyone else. Another game Mansa Musa built the spaceship. One of the games I switched and attempted a cultural win but just couldn't get there.

I looked for opportunities to attack but just never felt strong enough at any point to do much. Any effort made in that direction would just lead to me underdeveloping everything else and by the time I get Cossacks most of the others usually have reasonably comparable units.

So, in game 4 I went in with the plan to try for a Cultural win from day 1. The random map turned out to be Panagea and I met all the other Civs relatively early with Hatshepsut, Tokagawa and Napolean bordering me. I wasn't that thrilled with the last two being there and Napolean barely beat me to a good spot for my fourth city and I still decided to settle only three squares away because there were like 5 Dyes and a Banana possibly available. I was able to avoid war with the latter two the whole game, even though Napolean got annoyed with me a number of times. I ended up building two wonders, the Sistine Chapel and the Taj Mahal.

I got two religions relatively early on but really never got another one and was still able to win despite having only six cities as well. I was trying to get Buddhism for my third (a cultural flip would have put that in my wheelhouse) but a size 1 city that was completely surrounded by my land held out forever and by the time it flipped it was too late in the game to make a difference. That was actually Napolean's city where he tried to get all the Dyes at the beginning.

I've read about people trying to get to Liberalism first and I tried that for the first time. I was generally one tech ahead the whole time, was researching Education with no one else having it and just as I finished it, Asoka somehow finished that and Liberalism on the same turn out of nowhere.

Moscow and Rostov (the Dye city) each had close to 400 culture per turn once I got everything fully into culture mode. And then I had Novograd with about 200 per turn. I even had St. Petersburg that I could have chosen as one of my three cities as well. I got the Great Artists all the way up to 2200 by game's end.

There was some danger when I entered into a Defensive Pact when Tokagawa asked me. I did it and then immediately on the next turn Hatshepsut attacked and I was sucked into a war in 1804 with the points leader in the game. At game's end, she ended up having 2900 and I was last with 1500 (but normalized I got almost 15000 when I ended up winning in 1858).

She had Tanks, Artillery, Marines and Infantry. I had Grenadiers and a few Cossacks plus some lower level units. Fortunately my cultural boundaries had expanded things to the point she had a lot of open ground to cover to get to my cities (excepting my only coastal city, which she got to and razed right away). Plus I had nothing to do with my workers for awhile so just to be doing something I improved all the tiles in the middle of nowhere and she spend time destroying those useless improvement as well.

In the end, I was able to hold her off - I had the fallback plan of giving her St. Petersburg (that she kept asking for) but things never got quite that dire.

Asoka got to The Apollo Program in 1650 and quickly built the initial parts of the spaceship but somehow no one got beyond building the thrusters and I didn't have to worry too much about that.

That was a fun game! But I could never really relax at all. Now I will try with 10 total Civs and see how I do. Each additional Civ will make things that much harder.

So much better than playing Deity which doesn't even feel like a real game with the excess advantages the AI gets.