Growth by Acquisition challenge

[zerksees]

The gambit is simple: Do not build any settlers.

You can acquire cities from the AI. You can find settlers in goody huts.

In my preferences I choose all victory conditions, enabling culture flips, max opponents random draw, average AI aggression, roaming barbs, no AI respawn, no mapfinder or anything to improve starting position. I'm up for the challenge not worrying about high score. I prefer conquest win but the rest is there as needed

I have tried this twice in recent times. With my rusty experience and unknowns I started as Sumeria on monarch with standard panagea map and won conquest victory in 1858. 40 hours playing time.

That seemed too easy so I bumped it up to emperor for game 2. Got a poor draw where lots of plains and no rivers nearby. My lone city was stuck at size 5 for quite a while. Still managed to build the Great Library and finished that one off by conquest in 1772. 27 hours playing time.

With this approach you likely get no resources to start so early wars to be fought with archers and in my case Enkidu Warrior. Paid tribute when it was demanded. Cities are going to culture flip. Still once replaceable parts show up the combo of cavalry, artillery, infantry and me is disastrous for the AI.

Looks like demigod is next.

 

[zerksees]

My first attempt at demigod went in the tank. I tried Greece. Got a great starting location and built the Great Library but I was in the middle of the continent, underestimated the number of troops needed to take a Dutch city (Swiss Mercenaries bad) so that war dragged on too long. This was not my best work, and there is less room for error at this level, particularly with this variant. Finally took some of their cities but when I made the jump from despotism the Koreans attacked. I lost one city, gifted the other two to get my troops home, and bought off two other civs to DOW Korea but it wasn't enough. Maybe I'll try again.

In the meantime I decided to try it at chieftain with Egypt just to see if I could get the tech tree along fast enough and get a 20k culture victory. I ended up on a smallish continent and made fast work of the two AI there (mistake should have let them build me some cities) but even with all the transporting I got the AI to a one city challenge by 1510 and in the early 1900's got to 20k.

 

[Spoonwood]

I read this a few times, and thought about how I use to do OCC Monarch games. Finally, I remembered an old comment by Doc T.

 

[zerksees]

Attempt #2 at demigod was successful. While I built the Great Library, I still got some techs to build war units and other improvements. The key is to take enough units into battle, and bring friends. Had to pay some tribute, but slowly worked my way to the south and west clearing out some of the bit players and getting some workable cities. Eventually got to a three way game with the Zulu and the Spanish. They immediately signed MPP once we got to three so I used a bit of chicanery to get the war going. Spanish would sign MPP with me so after that I was clear of Zulu territory and they were in mine so a simple remove or declare got it started. The Spanish units did a lot of heavy lifting controlling the Zulu attacks and left me to take almost all the cities. It went a bit too well as I was just getting replaceable parts when the Zulu were knocked off the continent and a 2 city challenge. Put all $ to work upgrading units while warring with the Spanish to keep them from stockpiling, and eventually got the upper hand. Accidentally triggered domination around 1555 but they were all gone by 1590.

I really love this game but its a time drain. Need to set aside for a while again, so unclear when/if I'll give it a go at Deity. Might have to play a regular game at that level to sharpen myself up first.

 

[justanick]

Getting ivory and thus the Statue of Zeus may help in such a variation of the OCC. Similar would be true of Knights Templar, but that might be too late. You need to find the right timing. You should not have too large(and hence expensive) a military too early, but of course not too late either.