Well, I finished my game as Freya. I played on Demigod and got the cultural win with 75000 culture on turn 280
. Even though it was a cultural win, I did a lot of fighting, first to get territory to build many cities to build culture, and then to damage other civs to slow down their culture and tech. I didn't want anyone to transcend or build death clouds before I won.
The strength of the nature is mages easy to see, since both the expansionist and agricultural traits really paid off in the early expansion. The Agri trait is pretty amazing: every town starts with 3 food in its center tile (don't have to be on a river), you start with the tech for granaries, and build them at half cost. Irrigating without water is nice, too. I had as many cities as the nearby death mages when the expansion phase was done
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After expanding and building nature shrines and wizards guilds in my cities, I went to war against my neighbor, Rjak. I had started with goblins in my territory, so the fight was my catapults and goblin spearmen against his shadowmen and bow skinks. I had a few half-gnolls and treants, too, but the goblins are a much cheaper way to raise an army. He had tons of shadowmen, so we fought at the border and I lost some goblins before I could start moving on his cities.
Then Mordja attacked from my north (shadowmen and necromancers) and I had to cancel my war on Rjak to fight them off. My fast defenders were able to get to the threatened city and prevent its capture. Again, I fought at the border for a while before advancing. I had earth elementals and centaurs and two centaur armies before I finally finished off the two death mages
. Side note: I love the names of Freya's MGLs, they sound so non-aggressive. My armies were lead by Greenleaf and Waylish. Later, I got Elicia and Misty. Oooh, scary.
Now I owned my continent and built culture in my new cities. But to win, I would still have to build up myself and tear down others. Tlaloc was the world leader, he had settled a large empire, and was making it bigger by conquering Ariel. Earth elementals and gnoll rangers against champions and sorcerors is a bad deal for the life mage. Tlaloc's war meant that his rearguard cities were lightly defended when I invaded (giant turtles from the lizardmen are great transports). I captured several major cities and his capital before calling peace. Tlaloc was now just another civ and no longer the world leader.
Next, I hit Oberic to reduce his culture. I had to fight throught white riders and wizards, but he didn't have too many. The only new unit I had added to my army was goblin wolfriders. Those are a good unit: stats of a centaur, but 40 shields compared to 70. They're not very powerful, but they're cheap and can retreat so attacking with them is a very small risk. Also, now that my empire was large and non-contiguous, I started using pterodactyls. They're convenient for ferrying new troops to the front, and I also had a rapid reaction force. Five pterocactyls and five units stationed in one city could reach any city in my empire in one turn. That was all the defense I needed for my home continent and every city could be empty.
I was building culture in every captured city by cash-rushing and using civil engineers
. In order of best culture per shield, the improvements rank: wizards guild, dark altar, nature shrine, sages guild, halls of the dead, temple. As a scientific civ, that's the order I built them in. Interesting note: Vlad is the culture king, the only wizard to be scientific and religious. He didn't do too well in my current game, though.
With Oberic and Tlaloc knocked down, Lo-Pan was now my top competitor. He'd been totally unmolested on the island he shared with Raven, and now he took the tech lead by a wide margin. He made lots of money selling the tech and was going nuts with his spies. He sabotaged production of my wonders and temples. He stole my military plans. I got reports that he did them successfully, but I don't know how many things he did undetected. He tried propaganda at least five times but never succeeded (yay for cultural advantage!). He was probably doing this to other civs as well, he started capturing cities that had changed hands several times on the big continent at an amazing rate. Some of those might have been propaganda, but some of it was his maulers and wyvern riders.
So I had to take the fight to him. He had maulers, wyverns, and dwarven thunderers. I had trebuchets and armies of earth elementals and glade riders. Yikes, with those chaos and dwarf units, this is one of the only times a tech and resource disadvantage makes a big difference. When I invaded his homeland cities, I mainly bombarded and attacked with my armies (8 defense + extra hp + dwarven fortress + metropolis bonus = huge defense) so it could take several turns to defeat important cities. The battle at his capital was epic. It must have lasted about 12 turns, I lost armies, I created leaders, I killed about 15 thunderers, and he pop-rushed it from about size 15 down to 7. Finally, I had a good round of bombardment when he had too few defenders and my armies marched into Shen-khi. With Lo-Pan essentially finished, I was clearly the dominant civ. I won by culture a few turns later.
That was a very fun game. Culture victories are cool when you have to go out and tear down your top competitors instead of sitting back and building. I was very impressed by the nature mages' awesome expansion
, but their units are fairly mediocre :thumbdown:, except for the flying transports which make your army very mobile. Next up, I'll try to win on deity by transcending as Ariel.
. Actually, I take back some of the stuff I said about no big benefits to researching a few posts back. Archangels are impressive units, and Obelisks and Chaos forges are good production boosters. 
