G-Major 96

I had a good start with Suleiman, but claimed Iron too late and got DoWed by Elizabeth right after I bulbed Machinery. Be sure you have your source of Iron solidly defended. Settle on Iron, if that's a reasonable option. You don't want to lose Iron, a few turns after getting Machinery. I was only able to build 3 Crossbowmen before Elizabeth captured my Iron City. I tried to recapture it with 2 Crossbowmen + 1 Archer and 3 Catapults, but fell short and eventually lost my entire wimpy stack.

I plan to try another start with Suleiman. I now have a better handle on how to squeeze out Machinery and Engineering sooner.

Brief Strategy Sketch:

Research Pottery first to build a few Cottages on Floodplains and Riverside Grassland plus build an early Granary for faster growth in the capital.

Next research worker technologies as needed like Animal Husbandry and Mining. Try to have a start with at least one Gems or Gold in the BFC.

Next, pass on Bronze Working for now, unless you have many forests to chop. Research Writing instead to build a Library in the capital. Crank up the population and get at least one Settler out. Hire at least one Scientist when the Library is completed. Do not build any great wonders, not even The Oracle. The Oracle will pollute your Great Person gene pool and your want to generate two Great Scientists as the first two Great People.

Be sure to avoid Fishing and Meditation (or with Meditation, avoid both Code of Laws and Drama). Doing the former avoids the Sailing -> Compass GS bulbing line. Doing the latter avoids "wasting" a GS bulb on Philosophy (which would require one to generate three GS rather than just two).

Be sure to build a small empire of 3-4 cities close to the capital to keep research high and maintenance low.

Before you can bulb Machinery, you must research or trade for Aesthetics, Mathematics, Alphabet and Iron Working, otherwise the GS would bulb these technologies. I recommend researching Mathematics first to trade plus smaller technologies for Alphabet once one or more is have Alphabet to trade. You will probably need to research Aesthetics, unless you include Mansa Musa as an opponent (I omitted him, because he may become a research threat). This strategy may work better without Mansa Musa in it.

To bulb Engineering, you simply need to trade for Masonry and research Construction.

Next research Feudalism. Capturing cities should keep research at 100%. Start chaining AI capitulations once Feudalism is completed. Give cities back to vassals to improve relations and reduce maintenance costs.

After Feudalism, Currency should be available for trade or tribute.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Another thing I'm considering doing is getting a vassal and then spamming it dated units to upgrade. In a test game I got lincoln of america to 200% original pop and 300% original land. I fell short of victory because I was too slow. For some reason, he never broke free and i kept getting 50% of his land lol. "here, upgrade these cats/longbows into infantry/arty gogogo"

Edit: I'm doing quite poorly, owing to the quick game speed = uberslow travel times. At this point, I'm probably going to just cheese-weasel PA it to get on the board and come back later after frustration wears off.

That is a very interesting idea (giving outdated units to one's vassals). How well do your vassals take military direction? How many cities do they capture in your name?

If you have Infantry and Artillery, you are also very close to having ICBMs and especially Tactical Nukes. Spamming Tactical Nukes would be a cheap way to clear out all defenders in a city (two Tactical Nuke hits overlapping the city plot usually suffice to wipe out all defenders); you just need to march an adjacent unit outside the TN kill radius to take the city or just use Galleons/Transports to transport the capturing unit in case of port cities).

You just need to avoid capitulating/killing the last Civ and get enough Land of your own to exceed the Land Domination threshold which ranges from 56% to 64%, depending on the number of Opponent Civs included. Vassals provide only 50% Land, so you will and your vassals will need to own nearly all the land on the map to get Land Domination, depending on the ratio of vassal Land to your own Land.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
well, i won the game after like 15 hours of play, but missclicked on a war declare, it draged on,
my army was one turn to late to kill the chineese capitol... he won space, which is lol, as i could have nuked him 100x times around..

it just goes to show, how the no reaload thing sometimes is just unfair :(

anyways, im not doing this again, but i will be very impressed if anyone finishes pre 1900

gl hf! diety fast domination is a
 

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I just haven't heard much discussion from anyone else recently, except from TMIT and myself.

If it weren't for TMIT's careful analysis of the thread he posted a link to, I'd probably still be trying to find and early rush that works at Quick speed and Standard size map (I haven't quite given up that yet, but perhaps for this gauntlet I have; not enough time to try out all plausible strategies). That where you come in; to help piece together a plausible strategy, assuming your interested in this type of problem.

So, anyone out still out there, besides TMIT and me? Any ideas?

Strategies using Bulbs of Machinery and Engineering:

I'm currently considering a variant with a beeline (with diversions for Worker Technologies) to Writing (Library) -> Aesthetics -> Literature (Great Library, National Epic & Heroic Epic). The idea is to use the first Great Scientist to build an Academy in the capital and build the The Great Library as quickly as possible to have up to 4 Scientists in the capital without Caste System or Oxford University (lol).

Another idea is to build The Oracle in one's second city (to avoid gene pool pollution in the capital) and use it to get Code of Laws and run Caste System. One just needs to have a start with vast surplus of food to run several Scientists. This may not be viable, since in the one game I tried it, Elizabeth completed The Oracle in t38, while I completed Priesthood in 39t.

I've also been able to generate three Great Scientists in time for this strategy, just using Libraries in two cities, capital gets the first two GS and the second city starts running Scientists after the capital pops the 1st GS, thus it will pop the 3rd GS. I've been able to bulb Metal Casting, Machinery and Engineering in time to get a head start on the AI in military technology.

I'm convinced that Suleiman is the best leader choice for an early medieval era unit win and Janissaries (+25% versus archery, mounted and melee units) to get the job done at the end, if necessary.

===

I noticed another post from fizbankovi, just before posting the above.

fizbankovi, thanks for posting. Sorry about your bad luck.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
i am thinking about abusing archipelago, one way or a another. Late game wars do go much faster due to very high mivement speeds. u just need to expand very carefully and pretty much win before u even start fighting. i did one more with victoria. redcoat drafting but it simply is not fast enough. while i took out 2 civs 1 ran away so much i couldnt face him anyomore...
 
I'm having some practice games to use the Treb+Xbow strategy as don't want to waste a good start until i've gotten use to it. Rolled a 4 FP, Double Gold, Settler on Plains Hill for my serious attempt :)

*edit*

All Suleiman games so far but might try afew games as Peter and maybe Gandhi for trying to Oracle Caste.
 
i think i have a winner. to bad i gotta work toady. i wish i could take vacation, just for this one game. i had the most amazing early game ever. Totaly different then what i was planing, but u gotta take what the map gives. (elizabeth on archipelagio)
 
good startin position is soo much more then a good capitol belive me. on these settings its much more important to have a good combination of city sites for urself, and the computer playing into ur hand. the bonuses the AI gets means you CANNOT outplay him early game. even one bad fight can cost u the game, as healing is not faster then normal, but the AI will reenforce with 1 unit/ turn. If you attack with just 1-2 units too few, u are a goner. Its the main reason why all my early UU rushes have failed. They started out good, and then i would get 1 bad roll, and the guy survives with 1 defender. Next turn, a green longbow looking at my red horse archers...
Same thing late game. If your war just takes 2-3 turns too long, the other ais will be too fast away to catch. When you attack here, u need to mean buisness. Fast wars, with destroying force. reserch fast, produce fast, kill fast and vassal fast, or you die. Dont blink, whatever you do, dont blink!
 
You certainly don't have to bulb mach/engineering. Assuming you can get some decent city sites a very fast rifling time should be plenty doable also. Great library can be very useful for that. You also don't have to limit your bulbing setup then, as the lib path is the easiest to take with Gsci.
 
I managed to throw my perfect start. I will upload the save so anyone can try it out.
 

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You certainly don't have to bulb mach/engineering. Assuming you can get some decent city sites a very fast rifling time should be plenty doable also. Great library can be very useful for that. You also don't have to limit your bulbing setup then, as the lib path is the easiest to take with Gsci.

If you are fast enough to Liberalism, you could take Rifling as the free technology.

Rifleman Rush (Pure Rifling Strategy):

The Rifling only strategy as TMIT appears to be suggesting should be just as effective as a Cavalry rush (see Deity Large Quick HoF table), but it doesn't require Military Tradition, so you can start the final war much earlier.

Riflemen/Tactical Nuke Rush (Fission and Rifling -> Rocketry Strategy):

As hinted at in previous post, there's also the rather easy Rifleman/Tactical Nuke rush. Just hit your target city with 2 tactical nukes and walk in unopposed with any unit that can can a city (even a Warrior, if you have any left from before gunpowder). The rush is getting to Fission and Rocketry (via Rifling) as quickly as possible. Great Scientists can bulb Scientific Method -> Physics -> Biology -> Electricity -> Fission. If you research Electricity or get it via Liberalism, Biology can be skipped. You will need 2-3 Great Scientists per later technology bulbed, so you will need a monster Great Scientist Farm.

Since tactical nukes have a range of 4, you will want to find chains of cities to attack that are no more than 5 plots apart (remember that nuclear weapons have a kill radius of 1 = a 3 x 3 square, so its usually possible to hit a city 5 plots away, except diagonal paths that are greater than 5:1 or 1:5 in the x:y direction where you are then limited to 4 plot kill range). In case the next city is outside of this range, you can still build a fort in the direction of the next city; when the current city comes out of disorder and covers the fort with your culture, you can rebase several TCs there and attack. In case you can't wait, generate a few Great Artists in the previous eras and create a Great Work in the city you capture, build a Fort with an Army of Workers up to four plots in the direction of the next city and there will be no delay due to disorder.

As long as you maintain your supply of tactical nukes and have at least a Warrior to capture cities, you need not research beyond Rocketry and Fission, although Ecology would be good for cleaning up all the fallout you will be generating. BTW, this will work well on Archipelago with tiny islands, since fallout has no effect on water plots.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Well just completed my first ever deity win, after quite a few failed attempts, so I am excited about that. The date of 2017 is really bad, but I am content to just have a submission on these settings. Tried something different and went with Archipelago - tiny islands map type to try to slow down the AI expansion and production. I played mostly peaceful until I started building nukes and then just went crazy with nukes + drafted infantry on transports to take over.
 
Well just completed my first ever deity win, after quite a few failed attempts, so I am excited about that. The date of 2017 is really bad, but I am content to just have a submission on these settings. Tried something different and went with Archipelago - tiny islands map type to try to slow down the AI expansion and production. I played mostly peaceful until I started building nukes and then just went crazy with nukes + drafted infantry on transports to take over.

Well done! Congratulations!

You probably could have gotten by with Galleons, assuming the AI's naval technology was weaker such as Galleys and Triremes. Airports and Paratroopers are another high technology option. It is possible to hide Galleons from superior naval vessels in cities and fort/ports and simply move from city/fort to city/fort without ever exposing your "transport" vessels to naval attack. When attacking a city via a Galleon, just be sure it has one more movement point left, so it can slip into a city it just helped capture.

You can rebase tactical nukes and launch in the same manner from city/fort and even eliminate disorder from a captured city via a Great Artist. Also consider the spy mission that injects culture into a city before you capture it; it will pop to ring 2 out of disorder after sufficient culture is injected into a city you plan to capture. Have you read my previous post on this subject of using Tactical Nukes and Riflemen to achieve domination? It's in post #31 above.

Will you try it again to improve your date?

In any case, great game! You should be proud of it, because the settings are really difficult to beat.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
1886 submitted

elizabteh, continents.

first enemy died to riles and cannons. (rifles were drafted)

2nd enemy died to the same, but i already had workshops, communism.

3rd enemy fell ti infantry artilery. Continent was mine. (with vassals.)

I got a foothold on other continent with transports, infantry, and artilery.

then i went into nuke paratrooper mode.

btw, thats the pic of the starting position
 

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1886 submitted

elizabteh, continents.

first enemy died to riles and cannons. (rifles were drafted)

2nd enemy died to the same, but i already had workshops, communism.

3rd enemy fell ti infantry artilery. Continent was mine. (with vassals.)

I got a foothold on other continent with transports, infantry, and artilery.

then i went into nuke paratrooper mode.

btw, thats the pic of the starting position

Congratulations, fizbankovi! Very well done!

Would you care to provide more details such as unit types you faced in each era of your military engagements. Map type? Opponents?

Again, great game.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
It was a really crazy game. Quick speed is unbelievable. I started to spank axmen, longbows and the occasional musket men with cannons and rifles, but before I even finished with the Dutch, (it took me about 12 turns) he already had rifles. Soon enough Wilhelm of Oranje or what’s his face joined the English cause. Then I moved on to Ethiopia with a more veteran army of cannons and rifles, who was then fighting against all 3 Civ-s on the continent, as the French were bribed on him earlier. (Actually I bribed the French on the Dutch, and during that war Ethiopia declared on the French.)
The geography of the whole thing was screwed thought. I was not able to keep any cites from Ethiopia as it would have been culture pressured in a bad way, so after taking 2-3 of his biggest cites I caped him and gifted them back. By this time we had physics, and biology. My two vassals did the heavy lifting in research. Matching every new tech I discovered, with one of their own. Even thought I was on 10-16 cites and they had 6 each, but in wars they were useless.
I left the least advanced Civ of the continent for last, partly because he had a long snaky empire, the French. Also here I started off killing musket men, but he got to airships and rifles, + cavalry before the fight ended. No match for my infantry, fighter combo. (Lot of turns, as my army was 1 movement/ turn)
Warring here is incredibly high pressure. Loosing just 1 turn, may have deadly effects on your winning date.
I destroyed the French taking all off his land, leaving me at around 15 cites, all workshoped and coupled with communism, great infrastructure (gold, hammer and science multipliers all built with organized religion and caste system) and a golden age coming up. I had flight and fission, and the punch bag Americans had only rifles against my infantry by the time I shipped the men across the sea. (Most infantry were upgraded in the first city I took.) I did lose my first city to a lapse of mind and a major counter attack with cavalry, catapults and trebuchets. The city had 4-5 infantry defending, and contained 3-4 ships (carriers) and all my airplanes (around 15). I was really upset about this mistake there for a few minutes but I pulled myself together, and punished the Americans for their misbehaving.
I didn’t play it well thought. I had access to nukes earlier then i used them. Big mistake. These settings only allow for late wars with nukes. Forget everything else. Also I caped the Americans too early, or rather with too few cities captured. Something of a miss click, or more of a "click without thinking" thing. If I simply took all their cities and pumped some culture I would have won then and there... (Captain Hindsight to the rescue)
Anyways I set up some nice chains and took 6 cities on the first turn against the Khmer. (They built the internet, which really made me cautious, my great tech advantage vanished, and the Khmer gifted/traded all the stolen techs to their buddy, the Chinese.) They still refused to talk to me, even after I destroyed 60% of their power on the 1st turn. I pressed enter, and counter nukes started going off... much more than I have expected. Then a message came up from the Chinese declaring on me. Full on modern war, nukes, jet fighters, mech inf, paratroopers, etc. 4 civs vs 2. Epic ending...
I had a lot of fun killing more units then I care to count. The computer doesn’t know how to use nukes well however, and my number advantage showed realy fast. (I had a heroic epic and military academy city, plus an ironworks military academy city pumping 1 ICBM/turn) Strangely however, the late game wars went faster than the medieval ones, simply because of the faster movement speeds available)
I annihilated the Khmer and without their Vassal the Chinese lost their motivation, in the end I could have won domination, Diplo and Conquest on the same turn, but I didn’t know what the rules say about that, and was afraid to disqualify to such stupidity, so I just made peace with the Chinese, and didn’t start a vote. On the next turn 2 Khmer cites got out of revolt and I won.

I made some major misplays concerning caping times... but I was frankly too afraid of peace vassalages...

Also my great person farms were reason for some serious grief. Refusing to give me something else then scientists at the mid game, where they were 2-3 times only 40% and only engineers in the end, again at 30-40%. I used 5 scientists to bulb physics, as I had nothing better to do with them with but with my mausoleum some better timed golden ages would have been possible. (Even in the end 7 great people were waiting but I couldn’t make the 4-men golden age.)

I pulled only nationalism from lib, and had to 7 pop rushed the Taj Mahal, both messing up my timings because the AI-s were breathing down on my neck, and pulling techs out of their…

Never in my life have I felt so relived to finally end a game. Warring is not meant for quick speed, end even 15-20 turns before the end I had my doubts about winning.
 
I very much enjoyed reading your Epic Domination story. I really appreciated the time you spent writing it. You are absolutely right that Quick speed is the most challenging speed upon which to win a Domination Victory.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Why the greatest and hardest gauntlet had to come a moment I am choked...:mad:

oh wait...it is quick speed. :eek:
 
Expanding on my previous post I will try again for a better date, there was a lot I could have done better. My first 2 attempts which were both losses. I went with 10 AI’s to lower the domination limit, with mostly peaceful civs chosen so they would be easier to conquer. In the first loss, I had 3-4 vassals and was still warring when Ghandi won a space victory. so I restarted and played with similar settings and lost again to Ghandi this time on a cultural victory.

I decided it was time to change up tactics, so I reduced the AIs from 10 down to 6, and picked all warmongering civs so I figured I would have to worry less about one of them going for a random victory condition. I chose Alexander, both Mongolian leaders, Monty, Shaka, and Japan. Playing on an Archipelago map with tiny islands setting, I decided to go with Hannibal for myself, with my basic strategy of being the only financial civ on a mostly water map. Financial with the great lighthouse and the extra trade routes from Cothons I was able to stay on par tech wise in the early game.

I was going to go for an early war but after founding about 5-6 cities on the nearby islands I realized I had no copper, iron, or horses in any of my territory. At this point I was about to chalk it up as bad luck, and restart again, but I realized I had ivory so I thought as a desperate attempt to save the game I would build some elephants and send them over on galleys to the nearest AI and see what happens. I had moderate success with this and captured about 4 cities before they got longbows, and my supply line got too stretched out to keep the wars going. So I mad peace and went back to builder mode for a while.

My 2nd phase of warring came when I got to frigates and riffles, I adopted nationalism, built frigates and galleys in about 75% of my cities, and drafted as many rifles as I could every turn. However with mostly water tiles most ships had to be whipped as population became available. All of this whipping and drafting put a hurt on my researching potential. This war mostly consisted of me reducing all cultural defenses with frigates, and using 0xp rifles to kill off the defending longbows and musketmen. Things were going well at this point and I thought I might be able to finish the game in this war as I had Japan, Gengis Khan, and Shaka as vassals, and was warring still on Kubli Khan. At this point Monty vassalized to Alex and they both DoW on me. Alex was the first to tech combustion and his destroyers did just that, and completely wiped out my entire navy leaving me pretty much crippled militarily. So I stopped my wars and tried to just turtle up and not lose any land to Alex’s superior technology. Eventually I had to give him a tech, all my gold, and some gold per turn to stop the war. He was blockading half of my cities so they were all starving and losing population which was my only source of production.

After stopping the war I was at about 35% land on the domination limit, Alex and Monty were teamed up on top of the score board with a tech lead, and I was trying to re-grow my population, with almost nothing for a standing navy or army, it was not looking good. Next came another peaceful phase where I was able to recover somewhat, and try to close the tech gap with the help of directing my vassals to tradable techs. Then Alex started building space ship parts, and I was thinking things are starting to go wrong again. Then I remembered Sun Tzu’s post about nukes. I had never really used them before as most games never lasted that long, and if they did I would just mass tanks and bombers to win that way. I figured this was about the only hope I had, as I was in no position to conduct a conventional war, and I was running out of time with under 100 turns to play.

I thought first of attacking Kubli as he was the only remaining free civ, but Alex was making me nervous with his spaceship building, so I decided to attack Monty first and try to break him free from Alex. I still had almost no navy at this point, and my tactics involved transports with 1-2 rifle or infantry in them capturing cities after 2-3 nukes had taken out all of the defenders. For the opening salvo I was able to get 2 subs with 3 tactical nukes each into position to get a good first turn on the war. A few turns later and I had vassalized Monty myself, however he only had like 2 cities at this point, I needed to keep him alive to try to get some techs from him. At this point Alex sent his massive navy at me again and started choking off all my cities, he also was in control of the UN and started passing stupid resolutions that really hurt me, such as forcing me out of slavery. However the emancipation penalty at this point was up to 7-8 in some cities. This forced me to adopt Universal Sufferage and setting my science to zero, and just using gold to buy more nukes, and ships while drafting infantry. This was a long island hopping war, and he tried several times to pass the no nuke UN thing which I defied every time. Near the end I was only getting about 500g per turn so I could only buy 1-2 nukes per turn so it was slow. Is there a way to stop your inflation rate, mine was around 110% and was costing me 1700+ gpt?

Eventually he vassaled, and I was sitting at ~60% land, and about 40 turns left to play. So I took 2 cities from the last remaining free AI, and turned my culture slider up to get faster border pops, and eventually got to the domination limit in 2017.

Currently trying again as the Dutch on similar settings, as I realize I need a source of production post slavery, and hopefully dikes will be what I need.
 
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