Machiavelli’s Wet Dream - Challenge for all playlevels

[zizzeus]

Machiavelli’s Wet Dream
I don't know if anyone has done a game like this before (maybe Madscientist has; if not, well, he should have)

Rules:
Only 1) You cannot “build” any military units. No professional armies.
Caveat to rule 1) This includes slow-building, whipping, and rush-buying. The only way to acquire units (besides having your cities razed) is through drafting. You may keep your starting warrior, and any units that spawn from city razings or random events. You may NOT upgrade any of your draftees, as that would be spending money on the army.

Settings:
Pangaea
Normal Speed
Barbs off (duh)
Unrestricted Leaders

Victory Conditions:
All enabled for the AI. You must win by conquest or domination. No hiding – get out there and fight!

Obvious consequences to rule 1)
You will have to avoid a war declaration until you can get to Nationalism.
Your cities will be quite unhappy without units to pacify them. Hereditary Rule is not going to help you.
Your army (once drafted) will be pretty one-dimensional. No siege, no mounted, no boats, planes or tanks. If you want to drop defences in a city, you’ll have to find another way.
Vassals allowed. (This might help you with the above problem, along with the obvious solution)

Handicaps:
You get a charismatic and aggressive leader to help with the happiness, and get some eventual specialization for your draftees.
You can’t beat Japan for early drafting.
There is some good happiness around.
None of the other leaders on the map will declare at pleased, and many are susceptible to bribery.

And the start ...

First map I generated; stone will be nice for walls and some wonders. I tested the Monarch save - it can be done. Suggested levels:

Prince and below - Try the Noble save
Monarch/Emperor - Try the Monarch save
Immortal/Deity - Try the Emperor save

View attachment Noble BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave
View attachment Monarch BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave
View attachment Emperor BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave

Post your results in spoilers!

 

[DampRain]

This actually sounds interesting

 

[TCMIV]

Can you upgrade great general units since they upgrade for free?

 

[zizzeus]

One more caveat:

You can build all non-combat units (workboat, worker, settler, scout, explorer, and spy). No airships.

Good question about the GG upgrade. I thought I thought of everything. I'll say it's allowed.

 

[deathturnip]

This looks crazy hard. Without token warriors, cities will start complaining about a lack of protection. Imma wimp out and try on noble.

 

[kossin]

This has been done with a slightly different variant:

no military at all, not even drafting.

Of course that bars dom/con VCs but Diplo was the way.

Not sure who did it, my memory is perhaps wrong but Kylearan maybe?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This has been done with a slightly different variant:

no military at all, not even drafting.

Of course that bars dom/con VCs but Diplo was the way.

Not sure who did it, my memory is perhaps wrong but Kylearan maybe?

Yeah, on monarch.

If people get lucky with the RNG, they can win the emperor save.

 

[Midnight-Blue766]

I've decided to start a game of my own as Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia (you never actually said I had to choose a leader and civ of different nations!), as I would like to have a good city building empire.

Spoiler :

My neighbours are Monty of Greece and Huayana Capac of Sumeria. Perhaps if I'm lucky, Monty would be too busy trying to kill the Incas...

I popped a warrior from a goody hut, so I've sent it to Aksum to defend it in case Monty declares war on me. In the meantime, I've decided to go for specialist economy so I can have some science and culture before nationalism.

 

[DampRain]

Trying it on Monarch, I'll post a report thing when I'm done. An alternate civ you could have been was zara, since his draft is pretty interesting as well.

Spoiler :

It's almost easy... so far. I totally forgot how much of a pushover monarch was O_o. I went mids for rep, since I figure happiness is a huge deterent. So have a semi nice bureau cap. My draft city is the one with 2 fish at the north west most of the map. I have extremely shoddy play (vic for example went through my "blockers" and settle one on the 4th ring of cap, automated workers, and being somewhat stupid in some of my other choices, but I'm having LOTS of fun .

Just started the war with vic, her SoD (or what I assume it is, is about 6 units... but she brought in louis. I foolishly didn't get people to declare on louis before I declared, religious blocks. But since he declared bribed 2, so there are 6 nations at war, only 1 vassal. See how it goes.

 

[zizzeus]

This has been done with a slightly different variant:

no military at all, not even drafting.

Of course that bars dom/con VCs but Diplo was the way.

Well then it hasn't really been done then, has it?

I've decided to start a game of my own as Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia (you never actually said I had to choose a leader and civ of different nations!)

That's true I didn't, but I did post 3 games with Boudica of Japan so that we could compare strategies. Either way. I did consider Ethiopia but I figured we'd want to start the draft right away with macemen so Japan would see more benefit.

@Damprain

Spoiler :

In my test game I used the southern 2-fish city for the Globe. Same food but a gold mine and more forests to chop - both places looked pretty good though after copper spawned.
Victoria also snuck a settler by and put a city in the 4th ring. It got culture crushed pretty quickly.

 

[DampRain]

@zizzeus

Spoiler :

She did that in your game as well? Thats just funny , Yeah its provided a free settler for me. O I'm meant to settle antoher 2 cities using those two fish, I just kind of forgot... whoops.

 

[zizzeus]

Monarch save, until first capitulation

Spoiler :

I decided to ignore liberalism, heading straight for nationalism with the great scientist philosophy bulb. Was first to philosophy, but missed code of laws by one turn. Even still I got 3 religions spread. Everyone but Frederick is hindu so of course I adopt it, but Louis later switches to confu (Maybe not so bad that he got it first?)

I think my tech path went something like agr->AH->mining->masonry->pottery->writing->bronze->med->priesthood->CoL
I was able to trade CoL for everything else I missed, and later philosophy as well. I forgot that on Monarch you don`t have to worry as much about trading limits.

In preparation for drafting, I built temples, forges, theatres, and barracks in every city, and colosseums in the big cities. I hooked up all the happiness, and traded my extra fish and banana for some more.

I timed the Globe to finish right when nationalism was discovered, and started whipping samurai everywhere. The results:

DoW on Victoria 1180 AD. I have to go now since she`s 4 turns from Oromos. I split my stack in two and take two border cities using spies to drop defenses in the city with a castle. The other one had only two longbows and some knights, so I didn`t waste any spy points. I had stupidly forgot to up espionage against her earlier, so I had to run the spy slider pretty high to have enough points to revolt two of her cities. The two stacks combine, heal, get reinforced and promoted (with a great general spread over 10 guys) and move on to Aksum. She has Oromos now but knights are the big problem. I pillaged the horse early in the war, but she`s getting Iron from Suleiman so crossbows and maces are still available.

Aksum falls, and she capitulates in 1280. I thought about taking one more city to ease the cultural pressure on Aksum, but I want to get started against Louis before he grows too big.


I`m now first in score, but will probably lose liberalism to Suleiman. I`ll tech gunpowder and then rifling and try to finish this game with rifles. Brennus has the largest empire, so I may try to avoid war with him. I shouldn`t need his territory for the domination limit.

I didn`t bribe anyone into war. I suspect that with the emperor save that might be necessary.

 

[shyuhe]

Had some time so gave it a run on emperor. I didn't realize barbs were off so I built the GW (totally unnecessary) and I also accidentally upgraded 5 or 6 rifles before I realized that was against the rules. Not that it would have made a difference at that point.

Spoiler :

I expanded slowly to 6 cities with a crappy GT city. Took nationalism from liberalism before I decided against using muskets. Instead I teched to rifles and declared on Vicky with a small stack of about 10 rifles (drafting only is slow!). Took her out fairly quickly and the others were all busy as I had bribed Brennus to war, leading to this:



After that I made a slow haul around the map with 1 move units and took out Louis next - vassalized him since I couldn't reach his island (I built a galley and caravel before I realized that's against the rules too ). Then I declared on the big AI, Suleiman. He had some fairly large stacks but I had infantry by then so it didn't matter, and I rolled right through him. Hatty only had 3 cities (2 when I declared) so she went down quick.

Interesting to note that Brennus never took peace with Suleiman this entire time (ever since my initial bribe). Eventually took all of Suleiman's land, then did a quick cap on Fred (one city conquered) and triggered domination.

Power graph:


And stats:


Didn't take any other pictures since I was on cruise control most of .the game The only annoying part about the rules is that I wasn't keeping track of which city I drafted in so I had to cycle through my cities a lot

 

[Carboniferous]

It's a shame the rules don't permit upgrading, since upgraded samurai would be nice to have. (You can draft them before you discover gunpowder). Rather seems to limit the point of picking Japan since you are unlikely to have nationalism for the full time samurai are available, so you can't make such good use of them on their own.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's a shame the rules don't permit upgrading, since upgraded samurai would be nice to have. (You can draft them before you discover gunpowder). Rather seems to limit the point of picking Japan since you are unlikely to have nationalism for the full time samurai are available, so you can't make such good use of them on their own.

They're for defense. Offensively, the best unit by far to draft is rifles, which offer the best food:hammer conversion one can normally get. Drafting before that is for defense and (ironically) happiness.

The real challenge is max milking the window of opportunity ----> if you can cap 3+ civs before someone gets rifles, you'll probably win since you can just feed vassals or use them to suck the AI in then take the remainders out with troop spam. If you are REALLY fast, you can close in on domination or conquest with rifles alone before anybody gets them. Doing that would be easy for me on noble, reasonable on monarch, difficult on emp.

 

[shyuhe]

The real challenge is max milking the window of opportunity ----> if you can cap 3+ civs before someone gets rifles, you'll probably win since you can just feed vassals or use them to suck the AI in then take the remainders out with troop spam. If you are REALLY fast, you can close in on domination or conquest with rifles alone before anybody gets them. Doing that would be easy for me on noble, reasonable on monarch, difficult on emp.

With a slower game speed, I think you can finish the map with just rifles. I took out 2.5 civs with rifles, the other 2.5 with infantry (didn't need to declare on the last). The biggest thing limiting my conquest speed was the slow movement speed of rifles.

I found it pretty funny that drafting a unit and leaving it in the city generally increased the happiness in the city, even accounting for the -3 from the draft. The toughest part of this variant is that you can't make more than 3 units per turn, ever. So I don't know if it's possible to steamroll in immortal with these rules.

 

[zizzeus]

They're for defense.

Speak for yourself! I capped Victoria and Louis with samurai alone. No need to wait for rifles to get going. Muskets you can leave behind for city defense since they can get CGarrison. Take the maces with you since they get city raider.

Domination - 1806AD

Spoiler :

Victoria proved to be an excellent vassal, teching the bottom of the tree for me (not that you need any of those techs here) and eventually Assembly Line, although I only drafted two infantry and never used them. I love the new 3.19 rules requiring vassals to trade tech regardless of their feelings. I only needed to take 3 of Louis cities before he gave in, and you can see my first rifle conscripts starting to arrive on the scene.

Suleiman and his peacevassal Hatshepsut have grenadiers already, so I attach a GG to 9 rifles and a samurai and head towards Brennus/Frederick. 3 fronts now, and he doesn't even have Gunpowder let alone military science! I had to take about 5 cities before Frederick broke off, and then Suleiman declared war on Frederick too. I figured that I needed to get to him quickly before he capitulates to Suleiman's team, and he joins me after just one city. Brennus followed shortly after.

With all of these vassals, I won't have enough land without declaring on Suleiman. I have spies everywhere now (one city has been building them non-stop since the first war) but they have rifles and Hatshepsut is teching infantry. When she has 5 turns left, I invaded. Since she only had 3 cities, taking two of them pushed infantry into unreachable territory. Suleiman mysteriously sends his stack into Frederick's territory instead of defending his capital from my west stack, so I gift Freddy all the military techs I have and tell him to hold on. He lost a city, but Domination followed shortly after.

Not the tightest play for me in the beginning or during the wars, and I picked up a few wonders I didn't really need. The wars go relatively quick if you split the stacks and place spies early enough. A good game for anyone needing some improvement in their drafting, or in using spies instead of siege.

 

[DampRain]

GJ zizzeus,

I didn't do any espionage, (something I should fix in future), and have to call this game a loss (how embarassing).

 

[Sian]

eventhough its no-barbs i'd might still have a go at GW for some Great Spies to give me a esprionage head start and use massive spies

 

[zizzeus]

Great spies were definitely a godsend. I think I got 3 this game (pretty lucky) without the great wall. Infiltrated with all of them.

I'm not sure about delaying expansion with the great wall though. It's pangaea and you're bordered by 2 imperialistic leaders. If Victoria gets the eastern iron or ivory ...