First Diety Attempt, Winnable?

[gaash2]

So I finally decided to try to actually play diety (though w/no barbs) despite my general sloppiness as I've gotten quite comfortable I can usually win on IMM. Leader is Shaka. It's about 1600 AD. I have seen videos/threads where people are winning from worse, but gonna be a big waste of time if Mansa/etc. are too far ahead.

Any Thoughts and suggestions much appreciated.

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[krikav]

First of all, a congrats of getting this far in the game and not dying, you have also managed to bust out and gotten more land.
You are clearly doing many things right!

Also, take my advice with a grain of salt, I have just recently started to aquire some wins on deity.


Mansa is always a pain to handle, but in many cases he calms down and goes for culture in the late game, after which you need to keep an constant watch and take/raze his cities that approach legendary, which after a while can start to resemble whack-a-mole. >_<

But in this game, Mansa has gotten quite huge. It seems that he is winning over Sully as well.
Not at all sure if this game is winnable, mansa is just ridiculus and it's quite late in the game already.
I'm quite sure that noone can win a UN win in this game, which could be a relief.

Some feedback:
What is the reason for the peace treaty with charly, what stopped you from pushing forwards and take more of his cities?

You are in free speech, probably to aid your conqured cities. This is probably not efficient. With cities in that spot, it can be good to take a vassal and gift some strategic cities back to stop border pressure.
Put some garissons there and make the best use you can of the cities now, instead of investing alot of effort into making them better in the long term.
Your empire is not really set up for state property, way too few workshops and very few watermills. 3 workers is way to low, have you lost them or have you forgotten to build/aquire more as you conquer more land?

I don't really like how you have handled diplo in this game, there is no point having mansa as a best buddy really, he will trade techs even if he hates you. And as he is likely to build the UN, he will vote for himself no matter what.
It's better to keep the guys out on the islands as happy trading partners and possible voters, and instead roll over the guys on your continent.

Short term prio here I would say is to get charly of Sullys back, so that Sully can defend himself against Mansa.
You also need to put that army of yours to work asap.

 

[gaash2]

As you noted I made some critical mistakes in peace too early (w Babylon before clearing the continent which blocked me from attacking lincoln when Babylon peace vassaled) and then probably a city or two too early w charly. I feel Ike my army is not strong enough to keep fighting charly who has tanks until I get some infantry. Frankly I don’t understand a lot of the YouTube’s I see where lain et al win with tiny armies. Maybe better promotions ?

 

[Olafeson]

After taking a look at this map i think the map is lost. Mansa Musa is in the game and as usual he is far ahead in tech huge. Too huge and far ahead i am afraid. The diplo situation is a mess and the only way to win would be probably a Diplomatic victory. Since Mansa will soon go to space. He is already building the space ship parts.

In order to win diplomatic victory you have to be the first or second biggest guy in population of all civs in the game. Then you must get enough votes from the remaining civs that are not eligible for vote. The other guy will who can be voted will always vote for himself of course. So you must make the remaining civs hate mansa and like you.

His military tech is tanks and marines and soon he will have modern armor and mobile artillery too. He already has babylona s a vassal and soon will have the inca and maybe even the ottomans too. Suleyman does not even have infantry. I think he still has only rifles and fights vs tanks. He will be crushed.

Also you declared on Holy Roman Empire but he has Infantry and tanks. It will be very hard to pull it off with your rifles and artillery. Guess you got lucky you got enough war success to even sign a peace treaty. I do not fully understand why everyone is fighting but i guess there was a lot of bribing involved.

 

[Olafeson]

If you are interested i can point out a couple of mistakes you made. I put them in spoiler since it is quite a lot. I am not the best Civ player myself but maybe it will help you improve a bit. Surely some of the veterans have better advice, but for now i give you my opinion.

Spoiler :

1. I can see that you went to war with babylon and captured his capitol ( Akkad, Babylon) but Hammurabi is now a vassal to Mansa Musa and not to you. That happens quite often if you not aware of the peace vassal mechanic. If a Civ becomes to weak, they often vassal to Civs who are much stronger and who they like. Mansa was pleased or friendly to hammurabi (i dont know the exact threshold) and also hammurabi did like mansa. So he decided to chicken out as he was losing and vassal to Mansa. You can prevent that by keeping Mansa busy in a war, or begging from Mansa so that you get a 10 turn peace treaty.

I am not 100% sure about the mechanics, it can happen that he vassals and you are out of the war , but it can also happen that Mansa agrees to be Hammurabis Master and then join in his war and attack you. Maybe someone can break us down the game mechanics for that.

2. Do not try and run culture in the cities you you captured from Hammurabi. The other cities have already hundreds of culture on the tiles and they will not flip back in this game ever. For example in Babylon you only have 2 % culture in the adjactant tiles while babylon has 97%.

3. You only have 19 towns, that meas if you run free speech you get + 38 commerce since every town produces 2 commerce more. That is not really worth it, since you also don t benefit from the extra culture.

4. State Property is nice to reduce your maintenance in larger empires. But you also want to benefit from the extra food for windmills and workshops and the 10% hammer bonus. At this point in the game you usually want to replace your towns slowly with windmills/watermills/workshops and go into State Property and Caste System, then build forges, factories and coal plants. So you can boost your hammers to +110% (with SP). You will lose the commerce from your cottages but you can still tech by building research in the cities.

Often time even better since you only got maybe +25% from your commerce for having a library or maybe 50 - 75% with library, university and observatorium.
But you can now also build units or spaceship parts or buildings.

5. As already mentioned so late in the game, it is usually a good idea to stop using slavery and whipping units. Start building workshop, windmill and watermills in your whole land. Either go for State Property + Caste System or get a Great Person and found a corporation. Unfortunately i dont have much expierence with Corporations.

6. Only 3 workers is really really bad. You should have at least around 10-15, there is a lot of stuff to do now.

7. Usually Universities are not worth it if you do not play a philosophical leader. They cost 200 hammers and offer the same as a a library which only needs 90 hammers. If you decide to build universities you need to build 6 universites and then build Oxford. Most likely in your bureaucracy capitol with lots of grown cottages. Or just another city with lots of commerce . You build 2 and they are really not very efficient ( especially the one in Nobamba is pretty bad)

8. For Turn 230 your beaker rate of 508 with 14 cities is a bit poor. You should try to reach like at least 800 -1100. Something around that.

9. If your plan was to attack with rifles and artillery you don t really need Steam Power. Also it would be more efficient to use infantry and artillery in deity difficulty at this stage of the game. You need smth to protect your artillery, and rifleman are a bit too weak for that.