GOTM 15 - final spoiler

[Mutineer]

I did try to get diplomatic, but Hatty build UN befor I even researched Radio.
I had no way come out of research. I spend 1 GS on Philosofy and only Peter did not had it. Spend 2 well timed GS on Education, but when I did ALL AI (Exept Toky) had education. Peter wa sdead by Gandy. The only chance to win was to achieve Diplomatic, but I had>-5 emansipation unhappiness, forcing me to research democracy first.
I did a few small unprecisions, but I do not think I ever had chance to recover after early set back in form of Very late discovery of Hatty, Loss religion to Hatty and barbarian pillagin Gem mine and sprang cities in short absence of my fogbuster.

I think Gotm Map creator have a special preduce agains posibility of human player to get early religion. They seems to specially design maps to human player to allwasy loose race for early religion if they attempt one. In all Gotms I played I lost early religion. You may say I allways played challenger, true, but that is not an excuse.
For test I generated 10 stats on Custom continents and no where second civ was this far away, in more then 60% cases I got hinduism and only one's I lost it to civ with out Mysticism as starting tech. Statistically unrealible, but seems there we cutch 10% chance. In all games i got 2 tech in 10 games form hats around, but allways got some gold to cussion second city founding.

Removing hats from human starting position and leaving them for AI increase dificulty level well abow any rational. If some one manage to get lucky is not a good evidence of good quality of the map. As I see it, map was designed in such way to make relieble wictory by human inposible, but to let human to survive untill the end.

 

[Kemal]

I have to agree to some extent with the criticism of Mutineer above.

First though, my strory of the game:

Playing challenger, the early BC years went very well, creating a few quechua's and use all but one of them for fogbusting around the capital and taking out anything that would approach defending on forested hills, meaning I never lost a fight to the barbs and had no problems expanding.

The one quechua that did explore found Hatty quite fast, but I deemed it too far to be possible for a quechua run, and it simply continued exploring westward, since I expected another civ there at least considering the apparent size of the continent.

With that in mind, went for Alphabet, but unfortunately nobody was there so it wasn;t much of a help, until an exploring workboat evaded the dangers of 2barbarian coastal cities, and met Toku, Gandhi and Peter in around 550 BC. Unfortunately, all but Toku already had alphabet and a host of other techs by that time, making tech trading very difficult, and even worse Toku had expanded in such a way that my workboat couldn't explore to the north anymore due to Toku's xenophobic tendacies, making signing open borders a no-no with him.

Went for metal casting and managed to trade myself back in the tech game, and had a decent sized 6 city empire at 1 AD.. but it became apparent that no wars were going on on the other continent, and both Gandhi and Hatty were growing huge and running away with the lead.

At that point, I thought that a win (aiming for diplomatic from the start)would not be possible without getting more research potential and decreasing the enemy's, so I built a load of catapults and macemen/spears and attacked Egypt.. which went fairly well.

Captured two cities and had managed to poprush walls in one of them, and Hatty continued to send the bulk of the army via that city even though our border was pretty big, and they were easily taken care of.

At that point though, I made a slight error of underdefending a city between my empire and the front city with a single leftover cat, and a horse archer managed to squeek through undetected and captured the city. The huge cultural overlap that followed and destroyed my roaded supply line to the front city meant I couldn;t hold the fort in the norht, and basicly eliminated my progress so far in egyptian lands... at that point, I decided there was no reasonable hope left for victory, since I had commited myself to this strategy, and on deity a recovery from this debacle simply was out of the question.

Obviously, the turning point in this game was the decision to attack Egypt. It may be argued that I could have pulled it off without attacking and continue to pursue the vic with a 6 city sized empire... I don't know, but at least Toku was never going to vote for me, and with either a huge Gandhi or Egypt on the ballot I felt it may look grim in the future. The real error lay in poor positioning of my defences, which I think is a small error/oversight in itself but costs you the game at this level.

That said, while I appreciate the effort of getting a deity map on gotm, please either make sure and tell in advance it is a completely random map, like some of the old deity maps in gotm3 under matrix were, or -imho- don;t do it at all.

In this map, like said above, there were too many coincidental things going on forcing you to have taken decisions that normally would be poor on maps like these.

For example, the fact that Hatty was a) the only civ on the such a very big continent, and lightyears away. Such a setup in random maps is very rare, plus made a quecha run impossible, while I think it was evident to the creators of this gotm that many people would go and try the run nonetheless, either because most reported vics on deity involve such a run and they never played deity before, or because they expect that the game has not been started with Huayna Capac for nothing.

This map imho would probably have been much more interesting with Mansa Musa, who does not tempt people to a suicide run, and also has good traits and a decent anti-barb UU.

Furthermore, the fact that none of the AI except hatty were on the starting mass, but that a host of them could be contacted on the other continent with a mere exploring workboat, by jumping from one tile island to one tile island, is a gamebreaking characteristic imho. If you send out that early exploring workboat and it survives the barbs, the advantage is enormous.

Detecting other civs with a workboat on a random deity continent setting is an almost 0% chance imho, so getting an exploring workboat out early for this purpose would almost always be a waste of valuable early resources.

As it stands, the map indeed seems tailormade to create situations as we have seen so many of before in this spoiler... people getting decent sized empires and playing well, but losing after a long time without every having had any hope of a victory.

While it may very well have been possible I suppose for a flawless performance in this game to outplay the AI, it seems that your best chances here were to be found in outside parameters: AI-AI relations or crucial early choice based on unknown factors (Hatty's location/early naval exploring).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

As I see it, map was designed in such way to make relieble wictory by human inposible, but to let human to survive untill the end.

Ummm, doesn't the mere fact that it's a deity level game mean that the human player can't reliably win?

 

[Lehm]

@mutineer and Kemal

I have to agree with DynamicSpirit. Deity doesn´t mean: "Just try and win by first attempt". I think we had a good starting position beeing able to expand at least to 6 or 7 cities without beeing totally built in by the AI what usually occurs on Deity. An early sent workboat was necessary to contact trade partners, what I noticed too late. But nonetheless, it´s Deity. Also the best players don´t succeed every try. Luck is an important element of course, but this game wasn´t impossible to win. One guy already wrote about a victory, although I hope he is not the only one. Thanks to the GOTM stuff. I really enjoyed the game although it was a defeat for me too...

 

[Kemal]

But the complaint - or at least my complaint - isn't that every GotM should be winnable. Deity can almost never be won unless you heavily skewer the setup in your favour.

The problem I have - and that is more something about gotm in general than this specific one I admit - is that almost always the map is set up in such a matter that it heavily favours a certain strategy to follow, and has been set up accordingly.

But my views may be clouded here, I haven't played much civ4 gotm yet, while being heavily involved in the cracker age, where each game involved downloading a seperate modpack etc, so take my criticism with a pinch of salt I guess.

 

[Vynd]

I am sure that ainwood and the other GOTM and WOTM staff would never deliberately set us up with a map where we couldn't possibly win. I mean, what possible reason could there be for them to do that? Do you think these folks--who put in lots of time and effort to make the GOTMs happen--are secretly sadists who want to watch us fail, complain, and give up on the whole GOTM thing in disgust?

That's not to say it's wrong for us to offer some constructive criticism. But personally I think that criticism centering on the idea that the map design ensured most of us would lose, that only a lucky few who hit on the right moves could possibly win, is misguided. In my opinion the reason why only a lucky few could win this game is because Diety is, and should be, extremely difficult and unforgiving.

Now could the map have been arranged in such a way that the game was easier? Of course. The last time the GOTM games were up near the top of the difficulty ladder, the starting locations were routinely excellent. There were gold and floodplains and strategic resources arranged so perfectly you had to be blind not to know exactly where to build some great cities. And what happened? People complained about how the admins had ruined those games by making the starting areas too easy.

I'm sure that if Hatty had started close by then more people would have pulled off a successful Quecha rush. And then there would be a bunch of complaints in this thread about this. They'd say that it made the game easier than it should have been. And how it gave an unfair disadvantage to people who used that strategy as opposed to any of the other possible strategies. Similarly, if we'd started next to some Stone people would be complaining that the map was designed to favor the "totally peaceful Diety cultural win" strategy. To my eyes, the map wasn't designed to favor or disfavor any strategies. At most, I'd say it was designed to try and ensure that we'd have some room to grow and that we'd be less likely to get killed by Barbarians than we otherwise would be.

 

[Erkon]

Playing challenger
...
At that point though, I made a slight error of underdefending a city between my empire and the front city with a single leftover cat, and a horse archer managed to squeek through undetected and captured the city.
...
The real error lay in poor positioning of my defences, which I think is a small error/oversight in itself but costs you the game at this level.
...
For example, the fact that Hatty was a) the only civ on the such a very big continent, and lightyears away. Such a setup in random maps is very rare, plus made a quecha run impossible, while I think it was evident to the creators of this gotm that many people would go and try the run nonetheless, either because most reported vics on deity involve such a run and they never played deity before, or because they expect that the game has not been started with Huayna Capac for nothing.
...
While it may very well have been possible I suppose for a flawless performance in this game to outplay the AI, it seems that your best chances here were to be found in outside parameters: AI-AI relations or crucial early choice based on unknown factors (Hatty's location/early naval exploring).

I've never won on deity, so don't have an opinion if this particular map was winnable or not. However, I do have an opinion regarding difficulty level: to win deity I expect that you have to be very good at playing civ. You also have to be able to adopt your strategy when new information is available. There should still be some room for mistakes, perhaps one major or two/three minor. In a GOTM, most players should fail.

Now, playing the Challenger setting is more or less pure hubris There should be no room for any mistakes. Only close to flawless play with the correct strategy should win the game. Else, how could we increase difficulty?

With no intention to offend you, I do think that leaving a city close to the front unprotected is more than a slight error. It's something you can get away with on easier levels, but deity/challenger?

 

[Kemal]

Except that the city was not close to the front, but rather way back, which is why I left it poorly guarded. The real error lay not in leaving that city protected as it was, but rather in failing to correctly close down all approach vectors to the city with units more near the front.

That said, to win on deity - pure deity - I'm sure that many will agree here that you need to take huge risks to win. Playing without risks just doesn't give you the options you need to make up for terrain lost on the AI due to their huge bonuses on this level.

 

[Thrallia]

Contender: Conquest Loss in 935AD

The short history of Huayna Capac, the Sapa Inca, is as follows.

Cuzco is founded in place and I explore S with the worker and N with the Quechua until I see barbs, then the worker returns home.

I always explore along the coast, so I found Hatty relatively early and performed a worker steal on her. I killed an archer defending a worker, and then successfully defended against a second archer attack. I then began escorting my new worker home, only to lose my Quechua to a barb archer halfway back.

I quickly founded a city next to the gems, researched to BW, then founded a city next to the copper, and another SW of the gems for the gold and sheep.

So around 1000BC, I had 4 cities, and having been told much of the need for early warmongering on Diety, I began building up a strong military force of axes and quechua to attack Hatty. I didn't prioritize IW because I didn't see the need for it, I felt exploring, getting Alphabet, and taking down Hatty were more important, and I didn't think I needed swords for that.

Unfortunately, while building up my army, I met Toku...he already had 14 cities and Alphabet...I saw he was over 8 techs ahead of me already somehow. Hatty still didn't have alphabet, so I decided to finish researching it and hopefully trade with her.

A few turns before I discovered it, she did, and suddenly I saw she was just as far ahead of me as Toku was, and had more points than Toku did. I saw her expandind and adopt vassalage around 700BC, so I used my large army against the 3 barb cities that had come up between us. I lost numerous units attacking them, but managing to conquer all 3 cities, keeping two of them.

I was watching wonders being BIAFAL that I hadn't even researched prerequisites for the prerequisites! Meanwhile, thanks to my large army and now 6 city empire that extended quite a bit away from my capital, my economy crashed. I hit 0% science while losing 40 gpt! Within a few turns I was losing units due to a strike...and that's when Toku declared war on me.

He didn't land anything at first, heck, I ddin't even know he wasn't on my continent! I couldn't understand why I hadn't found any of his 14 cities, but figured we just had a really big continent. He shortly afterward landed 3 Elephants, 2 cats, and 3 swords next to my farthest west city. I should note that at this point I was slowly researching Math, it was still 20 turns away, and hadn't researched Sailing, IW, Masonry, or any number of other low level ancient techs.
He razed my city in one turn, despite a 40% culture defense and 2 spears fortified there. He replaced it with a settler and advanced on my next city, when Hatty declared war on me. I sent my entire excess army up to her lands hoping to take over one of her huge cities. Of course, that didn't happen, I didn't kill a single defending unit in her cities, but at least I wasn't losing money at 10% science anymore!

Toku razed my second most western city around 450AD, and I was researching Masonry at that point so I could build walls...Hatty started advancing on me with Maces and Crossbows, while Toku's elephants kept coming. Around 550AD, Gandhi found me, followed shortly after by Cyrus and Washington. Gandhi became my best friend...taking my only source of grain for 15 gpt to help me learn how to stack rocks on each other...I think he felt sympathy for me, seeing as how he was an advanced culture that knew knew how to throw rocks, ride horses, and put some kind of silvery metal on those horses to ride into battle. He also knew what money was and how to swim...neither of which did the poor Incans know.

In any case...Toku was mollified by the surrender of the great Incan city of Macchu Picchu, also known as the storehouse of all the Incan gold.

However, after Hatty razed Tiwanaku, stealing my gems from me forever, she refused to let up, even after I offered her my great Incan horses and bronzing techniques. I told her what great jewelry could be made with it, and she killed my messenger.

Luckily, I had had some copper pop up in Cuzco at some point, and I finally researched Masonry in 500AD, IW in 700AD, and Gandhi taught me how to ride horses in 850AD. I thanked him and told him that Hatty had already stolen all my horses.

I somehow got a GS in 750AD, apparently I'd had scientists fueling all my research for a few years in Cuzco thanks to the fact that Hatty's crossbows were shooting all my farmers. I could use him to research....sailing. Instead of wasting him on that, I researched sailing myself, learning it in 900AD, and using the GS on Compass. Thus it was that in 935AD, Hatty visited the ruins of Cuzco(a size 1 city when conquered, thus automatically razed) and found Huayna Capac, the former Sapa Inca, staring across the ocean...trying to get his Compass to work.

Final Score: 200

 

[Mutineer]

I play on Deity level often and This setup is the most dificult setup posible.

With only one civ on a huge starting continent there is no any chance to take on Hatty, exept if you start very close and you can take her with very early units(Like quecha, war chariots, immortals, or even simple axes). With hatty that far away even for people who did manage to do quecha rush it was not very profitable. Problem is, that Hatty has a lot of room to expand, when you stick to basic 4 max cities on sustainable upkeep. So, Hatty just become too big to be taken on later in game.

That still could be winnable, if there is a thurd civ on the same continent.
If you manage in instigate a war between then, thet you can take on your target and become big enogth after your economy can sustain big empire.

Problem is, all 3 civs had to be on same continent, as otherwize AI can not and would not send any big forces out, so war does not kill AI army.

So, One has 0 chance to take Hatty. Other resonable target is Toky, but he is too far away.
In addition, I am sure in everyone game Gandy kill Alex. AI simple does not use Philosofical trat well and Gandy UU give his supper early grow. That combinend with week Alex starting position garanty that gandy will dominate him.

That mean Gandy as tech machine with out anyone to check him. You go to war - Gandy run in space. In time when you can invide him he is untoucheble.

So, War out. We left with culture or Diplomatic. For diplomatic you need to build UN. Posible, but you need to be very licky and know the map befor you start the game.
Problem is, other xccivs far away. One of most important source of early income, trade routes and early trades are out of question. Cultural imposible. Only one religion and lot of peace civs making tech speed so fast you will not get it befor AI run into space.

That why game was just pain and no fun. On no stage of the game I see no way to win, no matter how wild ideas I try to look at. Analisys was allways negative, even if I include best posible luck in my calculations.

It just not fun to play when you know that you can not win even with luck.

 

[VitalSol]

I play on Deity level often and This setup is the most dificult setup posible.

In addition, I am sure in everyone game Gandy kill Alex.

Did you meant Peter?
In my game I bribed Peter to attack Gandhi for tech.
He captured the city of Calcutta and kept it till the end of the game, despite huge cultural pressure from Gandhi.
In my experience, Gandhi usually passive in wars, hardly ever goes on offensive.

Cultural imposible. Only one religion and lot of peace civs making tech speed so fast you will not get it befor AI run into space.

As for culture, I had 5 religions and all the cathedrals for all of them. Anyway, culture was almost imossible, but there was a small chance that with the correct timing you could pull off the cultural win.

 

[Mutineer]

Yes, Peter, sorry.
In my game when I meat Gandy early on he was allredy in war with peter. Peter survived for a bit only because he was my only trading partner. He got Feodalism from me, which let him live a bit longer. Gandy never made peace with him and illiminate him with Knigths.

 

[Thrallia]

hm...In my game the only wars that took place were against me. Peter lost Novgorod to Gandhi in my game, but only because he was an idiot and founded it near Delhi, losing it a few hundred years later to cultural pressure

 

[akots]

...
It just not fun to play when you know that you can not win even with luck.

IMvHO, you are wrong regarding this game. It could have been won and probably both either by Culture or Diplomacy. Even such a miserable player as myself had a fair chance at both. And that actually killed both of my chances because could not decide firmly which condition to chase.

I also played challenger and was able to absolutely peacefully build 9 cities without any problems early in the game. At around 500AD there was a critical point when I had to decide either to develop cottages and science for Diplo or to rush cathedrals/missionaries and stick to Culture. First, I decided to go for culture which is pretty hard without Pyramids. I decided to stop researching after Liberalism/Printing press/Nationalism but for some strange reason (mostly lack of experience) revolted to Free Speech/Caste System at around 1100AD and only then noticed that neither I'm able to pop-rush cathedrals nor research fast enough to get both Nationalism and Printing Press within a reasonable time without Bureaucracy. There were also problems with city placement and I did not have a good Great Artist Farm having already popped 3 Great Scientists. There were mistakes. I would have been probably able to do the job and just understimated the possibilities since my situation around 1000AD was similar to what jesusin had described except that Tokugawa never was able to attack me despite trying to declare twice. Eventually, he got badly crippled by Roosevelt.

So, soon after this, I have revolted back to Bureacracy and started full-throttle research towards Mass Media. Unfortunately, I have built Catherdals and theaters instead of Universities and Oxford which I could have built much earlier. This resulted in lost tech trading opportunities which I could have had with Piter and may be even Toku at some point. So, I finished researching Mass Media in around 1660AD and had been able to have about 500gpt raw income to buy it or pop-rush as well since I had Shalespeare's theater in the city building UN. However, because of this stupidity and many mistakes, Roosevelt got it first beating my by something like arould 10 or 12 turns to it. This does not seem like a lot but I had probably lost at least 30 turns of research by hesitating in the middle of the game. Also, all relationships with the AI were splendid and if I would have been able to build it, there was a fair chance of winning the election before somebody launches (Roosevelt launched at 1734AD).

There was also an opportunity to make a Permanent Alliance with Hatty (we had Defensive Pact and mutual struggle against Peter) which could have made it even easier. Alas, she did not seem to have researched Fascism in this game.

So, again repeating, this game could have been won by a better player with proper planning and some good fortune but the latter was not really critical.

That was a very good lesson to learn.

Of course, this was not a military win setup and Inca are actually a very poor civ on this kind of map especially when kechua is absolutely useless thus leaving a human player essentially with a single trait however powerful it is. Not the best terrain either but not too bad, rather mediocre. Too many plains, too few rivers, not much luxuries, but all essential resources, health was mostly OK. So, it was an OK map and certainly could have been won peacefully.

 

[Jove]

I think it might have been possible to fight an early defensive war with Hatty to prevent her growth. Set the Capitol to settlers, then build a liberal mix of quechas, axes and spears everywhere else. Don't attack her cities, just prevent her from building any more.
This idea comes from my first war with Hatty. Apparently the barbs had crimped her style, she only had ~5 cities at 500AD. We took out 2 settlers in that one and at the time this seemed to leave some extra land available for us to settle. Maybe I should've spammed on this idea when I had the chance...

 

[jesusin]

I completely agree with akots.

Mutineer, I am sorry you didn't enjoy the game. It was the most enjoyable game for me ever, including Civ1, 2 and 3. I think that part of enjoying it so much was that I knew what I was trying to do and there was a chance of winning.

You have very important flaws in your way of playing (we all have). I think I could point out a few mistakes related to Religion. Please, take this as a sincere desire to help you improve, even though I am not a better player than yourself. I could be wrong in my appreciations, of course. Let me explain what I would change if I were you:
- Don't chase after Huts. All I got in GOTM15 were barbs, which killed my explorers. The information an explorer collects is far more important that any hut content.
- Hatty didn't get her religion from a hut. Huts don't give religious techs.
- Don't research a religious tech first. Don't ever make a religious tech your first research at Deity. That’s suicidal. It delays your expansion. You don’t have as much space in the average Deity game as we had in this one!
The benefits from founding a religion yourself instead of letting other spread their religion in your land are negligible. When an AI is spreading its religion it will send lots of missionaries, spreading it to every one of your cities, saving you the effort. When you have founded a religion, the AI assumes it is useless to spread theirs’, since you always will prefer your own (that’s what they do); so you get no more religions. So if you want a lot of religions for a cultural game, don’t ever found one! If you don’t care about the number of religions but you want one early, then you can found one yourself. Confucianism and (lightbulbed) Taoism are doable in Deity.

 

[Mutineer]

Your advice is just commonly accepted wisdom, but as everything commonly accepted not absolute. It is wrong. It is very valid strat to chase early religion even on deity. It works, and if you do not know how to use early religion it is your problem, not mine.
Who are you taken me for, stupid? Hats do not give religious tech, but they do give meditation. For Hatty to beat me to Polytheism she had to get Meditation from hat, he did not had Gems at capital.
The only problem with early religion is that you had to make that decision befor you know anything. In current case chasing religion was very reasonable decision.
Any AI near reasonable distance away = quecha rush it and there usually difficult and take quecha actions which need elsewhere to bring stolen worker. So, you will not have worker to do anything, so you can live with out workers tech. If you kill the only AI around no one going to spamm religion to you, so your own early religion will give you an edge to compensate for expenses of quecha rush.
Nothing wrong with that strat.

 

[Aeson]

Going into a Deity game with a preconceived notion of how to win, and/or taking huge risks, will only "work" if you cook the settings sufficiently, or are playing HOF style where you can just restart a new game when the **** hits the fan.

Quecha rushes tend to be HOF style games. They work well on cooked maps, but can fall flat on their face on standard settings for multiple reasons. Too far, bad idea. Mansa, AI cities on Hills, and/or neighbors with early Copper or Horses, bad idea. Your target is one of less than 3 natural trading partners, bad idea. Even when the conquest goes well, maintenance and over-investment into military can have put you in a serious hole, and you've eliminated a potential trading partner.

The saving grace of the Quecha rush is that by the 3rd Quecha you should know whether it's going to have a chance or not, and you need that exploration anyways to know what you should do. Plus the Quechas make for a very good light choke/worker steal if a rush is out, or optimal early fog busters if you have room to expand. So building those first couple Quechas is a good idea regardless IMO.

Looking at this game, CoL early (after Alphabet, perhaps before BW... though I say that from the perspective that Copper wasn't known to be there) looks like it was the key to the best shot at victory (any victory), and that would have been apparent rather quickly. When you see so much open space, you need Courthouses to help pay for filling up all that space. Wider city spacing (at least for cities 3+) to allow some backfilling later. Caste System for some quick border expansions and an early Great Artist, maybe even 2, to claim the land you can't maintain yet. Also, you might get Confucianism to boot. (Best to use Hatty's religion if she gets one herself. But having your own is still nice.)

 

[Lawrence]

I don't agree. This setup is just the most unique in Deity level.

In most deity games you can't win if you don't fight, while in this game it is very very hard to win if you do fight. However, if you don't fight, you have a good chance to win it.

I think Erkon used a good diplomatic strategy, be good with Toku. Since Toku will not trade techs with anybody in this game, it is a good idea to trade tech with him, let him be technically advanced and he will then attack someone and win. We see in Erkon's game the AI launched 30 turns later than the average of other games, that's the effect. That's the time that you can build the UN, build the culture, among other things.

I play on Deity level often and This setup is the most dificult setup posible.

With only one civ on a huge starting continent there is no any chance to take on Hatty, exept if you start very close and you can take her with very early units(Like quecha, war chariots, immortals, or even simple axes). With hatty that far away even for people who did manage to do quecha rush it was not very profitable. Problem is, that Hatty has a lot of room to expand, when you stick to basic 4 max cities on sustainable upkeep. So, Hatty just become too big to be taken on later in game.

That still could be winnable, if there is a thurd civ on the same continent.
If you manage in instigate a war between then, thet you can take on your target and become big enogth after your economy can sustain big empire.

Problem is, all 3 civs had to be on same continent, as otherwize AI can not and would not send any big forces out, so war does not kill AI army.

So, One has 0 chance to take Hatty. Other resonable target is Toky, but he is too far away.
In addition, I am sure in everyone game Gandy kill Alex. AI simple does not use Philosofical trat well and Gandy UU give his supper early grow. That combinend with week Alex starting position garanty that gandy will dominate him.

That mean Gandy as tech machine with out anyone to check him. You go to war - Gandy run in space. In time when you can invide him he is untoucheble.

So, War out. We left with culture or Diplomatic. For diplomatic you need to build UN. Posible, but you need to be very licky and know the map befor you start the game.
Problem is, other xccivs far away. One of most important source of early income, trade routes and early trades are out of question. Cultural imposible. Only one religion and lot of peace civs making tech speed so fast you will not get it befor AI run into space.

That why game was just pain and no fun. On no stage of the game I see no way to win, no matter how wild ideas I try to look at. Analisys was allways negative, even if I include best posible luck in my calculations.

It just not fun to play when you know that you can not win even with luck.

 

[Obormot]

The game is definitely winnable, and not just with a dimplomatic victory. I was in a very good position, but ran out of RL time. Here is how my game went briefly:

I settled on the plains hill. Not a optimal for peacefull developement, because too low on food, but I wanted to try a quechua rush, and this way I could pump quechuas out faster.

Switched to normal developement once it became obvious that there is no easy target fro rushing. I expanded to 4 cities by 1000BC and stopped there. I grabbed only the best locations, since I decided early on that I am going to kill Hatty, so there was no point in settling marginal cities. I built no wonders.

I went for Metal Casting after the basic techs were researched. Other options were Alphabet and CoL->Civil Service, but I didn't know yet whether tech trading would be possible and I wanted a tech that would be usefull by itself and really soon. Happyness was needed badly, so I went for those +2 happiness forges.

I did build a workboat relatively early, but It didn't matter, because I only made my first trade much later then I got contact with the other continent. So I disagree that this was a huge factor. You only loose much if you don't build an exploring workboat at all, which is obviously a wrong thing to do.

I cottage spammed my capital, triing to work a cottage as soon as got the happyness. I produced a GS in my 2nd city and built an academy in the capital to speed up science.

Metal Casting was not tradeable, some AI already had it, others didn't have alphabet, etc. But the rule here is not to panic and calmly go deeper into the tech tree, sooner or later you'll get a monopoly tech. So I went on getting machinery in 500BC or so, and indeed it was a monopoly.

I gifted MC to Toku to get him to pleased and unlock tech trading & open borders. I sailed through his land and met Cyrus and Roosvelt. I was able to trade to tech parity. I also got the gold for running 100%. The AI on deity provide lots of cash if you don't fall to far behind in techs.

I then researched CS, which I got around 1AD, and it was a monopoly again. I revolted to bureacracy of course, taking advantage of the academy in capital and the cottages that already started to grow. I had some cottages in other cities too by this time, but they were mostly geared for production.

I started building catapults as soon as I traded for construction, I also built several Xbows. When I got CS, I added several maces and started the war against Hatty. That was in 200BC or so. The war wasn't that difficult and I grabbed most of her land by 1000AD. It took about 20 cats and 20 maces. I didn't capture the cities in the western jungle. The plan was to let her expand and clear those jungles away, so that I can capture nice cities later. Also the WW got bitter, so I needed some time for it to settle down. I had to pay with some unhappiness in captured cities ("we yearn to join our motherland") for not finishing her off. Again, I desagree with people saying that sharing the continent with Hatty was bad, It was a really good thing actually. She doesn't build a lot of troops, so it is relatively easy to take her down. And once you do it, you have all the continent for yourself.

Despite having a war and paying lots of money for army support and newly captured cities I managed to run 100% research for the most part of the campaing, getting money from selling techs and capturing cities. I won the liberalism race, taking Printing Press for free to boost my cottages.

Diplomatic win would have been easy, but I didn't feel like doing diplo this time, becase it doesn't feel like a "real" win. So I didn't watch for diplo penalties, etc. I decided I should try a space-race, which I never tried before. So I cottage spammed all of my captured land and beelined to Democracy for emancipation.

Now I have 10 excellent cities. I built the FP in Egypt, Oxford in my capital and NE in Memphis, the city with 3 fish tiles, setting up my GP farm there. Unfortunatle Hatty didn't build any good wonders, except marginally usefull shrine (worth about 20gpt). The cottages are growing and I am about even in techs with the leading AIs (Roosvelt, Cyrus and Gandhi). (That is about 13xxAD)

I can attach my last save here when I get home, so that everyone may try winning from there.