HFC- Cup 3 - Catherine of The Vikings

[Metzi]

@ Sorania - Very nice gameplay. Intercontintal espoinage is a bit crazy, no? Good work, nice gameplay. Hopefully you remembered the build 5 citys rule, so 6 citys (5 + Capital).

@ Cam h - I hope you will explain what you did. Looks like a very interesting game.

 

[Cam_H]

Metzi,

Congratulations on your win!

I did the same thing in my ‘Cultural’ game by hoping that the United Nations resolution on Free Religion would be adopted, and wasted a lot of turns waiting for the next opportunity to put the resolution again (and again) where it got defeated (repeatedly). I ended up having to go the espionage route and using the ‘Influence Civics’ option, which in hindsight was the way it should have been done in the first place. It was this that held up victory for several dozen turns.

The big difference between my game and yours was that there was practically no warfare in my game, aside from Julius Caesar and Ramasses having the occasional skirmish that didn’t lead to too much. I hid behind the protection of defensive pacts with Huayna Capac and Zara Yaqob with practically no army at all, and maintained good relations with pretty well everyone.

Due to the variant that Catherine shall give into all demands, I indeed spent a lot of turns in anarchy thanks to frequent demands for switch civics. I inadvertently broke the rule once when I rejected Julius Caesar’s request for the 5,000 that I was stockpiling, and ended up giving it to him the next turn when it dawned on me what I’d done.

I picked up a few freebies; I got the Liberalism slingshot and took Nationalism, I got the free Great Artist out of Music, and I got a free Golden Age for the ‘Guns not Butter’ quest (‘Golden Age of Muskets’ for having the Taj Mahal). I got the four World Wonders that I was after; Pyramids, Sistine, Parthenon, and Taj Mahal.

On the downside, I picked up a lot of Great Scientists, most of who were ‘against the odds’. Building The Great Library certainly didn’t help however. I missed The Great Wall and The Statue of Liberty each by one turn. Another blunder, I founded Civilized Jewellers (consumes Gems, Silver, Gold, of which I had none other than through trade) that I got confused with Creative Constructions! As it happened, shortage of culture wasn’t the cause of the win’s delay, but the religious variant.

It was not until I flipped Salamanca that I had access to more than Christianity and Islam for a fair slab of the game. Aryan and Libyan were originally Barbarian cities, and these plus the six self-founded gave me nine cities in the end.

The posted game has just got the world’s religious status right (all under one religion or Free Religion … Ramesses just took up Free Religion), where Uppsala can use one of its three (!) sleeping Great Artists to create the win.

 

[Metzi]

Nice.
I didn't like you not giving into Ceasers demand, but as you did gift it to him afterwards I forgive you.
I too, was hoping and hoping for the UN election to go well.
Seems it's alot like Real Life polotics, no?

 

[bhavv]

bhavv play random leaders! By the sounds of it, trying to avoid creative civs is seriously undermining your fun/experience. And creative leaders are very fun, as you can block in civs quite efficiently.

I find that Cultral Civs and Cultural Victories are very easy and strong ways to play on lower difficulties. However, when you move up to high difficulties, you wont be able to block any civs using creative because just building a few cities makes your economy completely die.

Creative and / or culture games lose their appeal to me when playing on Emperor and up, where I prefer playing civs with economic advantages.

 

[Metzi]

I see. I personally haven't every won a culture victory, and I will make it a Goal in a future HFC.

 

[bhavv]

Culture wins are very possible on Monarch and below, and the cultural trait is very powerful too.

On Emperor+ both the cultural trait and culture wins become frustrating and difficult to play until you get used to managing a SE with a <20% beaker rate.

I were just trying TMITs Immortal game with Catherine, and completely broke my economy and couldnt keep up a decent tech pace on several attempts until I spawned two Great priests for a shrine and one settled. Even then, although I managed to get to liberalism first and grabbed several powerful wonders - Pyramids, GL, Uni of Sankore, Spiral Minaret, I still ended up far behind the two or three leading AIs who completely outpaced me with huge cities and and equally huge tech lead.

When I try playing games below monarch now, I end up with lots of AI capitualiting to me without even needing war because I end up expanding too fast with an empire about 3-5x the size of theirs. Then on Immortal its like the other way around minus the capitualation .

 

[Metzi]

lol.
I think Immortal+ player are clinically insane to be honest, it's amasing how they win.