[BTS] NC 191 Frederick of Germany

[bdubbs]

My game is salvageable but I'm chalking it up at a loss, might reload an early save and play it out differently

Spoiler :

I settled the continent and had Napoleon down to 3 cities. I had a couple units, but not many other than the warriors that had previously been spawn busters. I got careless and didn't make sure I had at least enough units to defend against swords and got rolled over by a French stack while I was over committing to wonders and tech.

 

[MeowZeDung]

Immortal to 2000BC:

Spoiler :

I haven't played in a while, so I thought NC would be the best avenue for getting involved in Civ again. So far this game seems to present a clear plan of action early on.

SIP and scouted in a clockwise ring around Berlin before the scout was eaten by a Lion. Met Napoleon and took note of the juicy double gold riverside PH site 3E of Berlin. It's a shame that there was no seafood to go with it. I couldn't help but notice the elephants either.

Tech path was Agriculture>AH>Wheel>BW>Pottery>Writing now in progress. My basic plan is to settle one or maybe two more cities - the Fish/Elephant and Sheep/Wine locations stand out - while working my way to Construction and HBR to elepult Napoleon into oblivion. With 3 gold tiles already in my borders, I don't think it will prove too difficult to do all of that reasonably fast. Since Fred is PHI, I'm curious if it's worth trying to bulb math in order to speed up research to Construction. Berlin won't be a bureaucracy powerhouse, so an Academy doesn't seem amazing here.

I'm curious about the mapscript. Seems to be very hilly. I'm also curious about the AI. Napoleon founded Buddhism, so there's likely no zealots, and he's the only AI I've met. After taking him out I may be isolated or semi-isolated. If there's enough good land around I suppose that's ok, but I hope that eliminating him doesn't get rid of any trading opportunities I have until optics.

 

[bdubbs]

My thoughts on the Map after playing through and failing

Spoiler :

I really liked this map even though I screwed it up in my own game. It's a really interesting challenge that just played a little differently than what I'm used to. This map seemed to strongly favor some sort of domination win on the high difficulties. Even if you managed to take out Napoleon and settle the continent I just have my doubts that there's enough commerce available to win space and idk who the rest of the leaders were and if there was any hope of a diplo win. There were some good food tiles out west so I'd have to imagine an economy driven by specialists and great scientists would be able to carry you to cuirs and optics but I barely win on monarch so I could be way off in that assumption.

 

[blunderwonder]

My thoughts on the Map after playing through and failing

Spoiler :

I really liked this map even though I screwed it up in my own game. It's a really interesting challenge that just played a little differently than what I'm used to. This map seemed to strongly favor some sort of domination win on the high difficulties. Even if you managed to take out Napoleon and settle the continent I just have my doubts that there's enough commerce available to win space and idk who the rest of the leaders were and if there was any hope of a diplo win. There were some good food tiles out west so I'd have to imagine an economy driven by specialists and great scientists would be able to carry you to cuirs and optics but I barely win on monarch so I could be way off in that assumption.

I think at the higher levels any isolation or semi isolation start requires the astronomy rush, i replayed this going the astronomy path instead of early war, and its just 100 times better, it just feels slow but the trades you can get plus the extra trade routes and all the gold you get in trade deals more than makes up for any lost time getting things like civil service or education, and it incidentally gives you the transport unit you would need to invade if/when necessary. Problem with the continents without going astronomy is that you end up at war sometimes, meanwhile everyone else is just teching, and you have no way back into the game. You just need some kind of commerce to finance the early war and stay somewhere near tech parity, and this map doesnt really allow for that. I suppose you could go to early war and go for astonomy but it would be harder and difficult to balance.

 

[elitetroops]

Now I'm getting interested in playing this myself as well. Don't have Civ installed right now, as I recently was forced to reinstall Windows and can't really play the next few weeks, but then I might give it a go.

Spoiler :

I'm a bit surprised that the map has turned out to be so challenging. Honestly, since the last Shaka map was quite challenging, my intention was to make an easier map. I was about to post a completely different map, medium&small with lots of good land and friendly neighbors, but switched to this one in the last minute. I saw that you've got a lock on elephants and double gold (4 gold on anything below deity), Napoleon can't DoW super early (needs IW). How hard can it be?? I suppose I must find out by myself...

 

[Pedro78]

How hard can it be??

I also thought that it was easier than the Shaka map at first -

Spoiler :

PHI trait, double gold, Ivory, Nappy better than Shaka. IIrc Nappy doesn't have any copper etc (Shaka always settled his second city on copper).

But the thing is that the Shaka map was very easy if you had the right strategy and were half-focused when playing. Here you will necessarily struggle at some point -

Spoiler :

On the Shaka map you had a great hilled chokepoint to let Shaka suicide his troops, which was very convenient. Also Shaka had crap land and couldn't really build many troops. Here Nappy is much tougher, especially as you attack later.

But most importantly in the Shaka game you had trading partners and intercontinental traderoutes

But overall I don't think it's very hard if you set the correct goals early on and stay focused. The biggest threat on this map is probably the early game RNG.

Also trying to gather motivation to play this map. Got a lot of scepticism (and a bit of hate ) when I stated on YT that this is (fairly easily) winnable, but my words are indeed not worth much if I don't give this map a shot

 

[Izuul]

Now I'm getting interested in playing this myself as well. Don't have Civ installed right now, as I recently was forced to reinstall Windows and can't really play the next few weeks, but then I might give it a go.

Spoiler :

I'm a bit surprised that the map has turned out to be so challenging. Honestly, since the last Shaka map was quite challenging, my intention was to make an easier map. I was about to post a completely different map, medium&small with lots of good land and friendly neighbors, but switched to this one in the last minute. I saw that you've got a lock on elephants and double gold (4 gold on anything below deity), Napoleon can't DoW super early (needs IW). How hard can it be?? I suppose I must find out by myself...

Spoiler :

Oh he can DoW pretty early. I think he declared on me around the 1500s BC (don't remember exactly) the first time i tried it.

I restarted and played everything the same in the early game to see what would happen and he dowed 1000 BC that time. I was able to defend myself and i could kill him now if i wanted to continue, but the rest of the game may be lost beyond that. Just so far behind.

Look at this though:

Spoiler :

The warrior and a couple of the archers are barb units, but that's still 70-75 units killed already.

 

[SittinDown]

Played to turn 72 (1080 BC).

Spoiler Writeup :

• Difficulty: Immortal.
• Decided to SIP. Explored Northeast, found Napoleon quick, and all that gold, but no food.
• Saw that Nap was close to the nice FP spot with the gold, so I went with AH, hoping to churn out some settlers.
• Seems to have worked pretty well, I didn't quite grab the forward spot I wanted, but I grabbed the 3NE spot from Berlin on the PH.
• Quickly built a 2nd settler after some fogbusting warriors, and placed that one 4E of Hamburg.
• Scouted interior, and saw the Marble, but nothing good around it. Mountains and my quick Eastern settling seems to have slowed down Nap.
• Tech order was Ag -> AH -> BW -> Wheel -> Fishing -> Pottery -> Writing -> Sailing.
• Thinking of going GLH, but maybe it's getting late for that.
• Got the ivory, so definitely should be able to take out Nap with Elepults. He doesn't seem to have much military, so I'm wondering if a shift to a HA attack would work. At the moment, I can 1st turn attack Orleans, and there's only 1 archer in it!

Spoiler Game view :

 

[ArchGhost]

Been a bit busy, so only got around to continuing tonight. Having to avoid Lain and AZ's playthroughs on youtube is no fun, so I gotta hurry up and finish soon.

Spoiler to turn 150 (Monarch) :

This is gonna be a lot more slapdash than before because I both forgot to think about what to screenshot and I'm losing interest because apparently Monarch is too easy for me at this point/on this map (though I'm certain my opening approach on even Emperor would give me trouble by comparison, I was far too aggressive here and being flippant regarding commerce). Monarch simply isn't punishing me enough to stop it from working, and the AIs are not really doing so hot with the semi-isolation as it turns out.

Don't know if elitetroops or anybody else shined some more truth on me but I played without checking the thread and I just want to complete this to get it off my mind at this point. I'll be back to read later.

So this is where I left off. I killed all but 1 of Napoleon's archers, and he has 2 workers + a settler in the city.

I killed Napoleon. I valued his three workers + spot to chop more than ~ 7 turns saved teching. He did whip a brand new CG archer but it + the injured survivor were no match for 3 catapults and 6 archers when several of them were still fresh themselves. I used Paris mostly to chop/overflow into GLib, NE and the Parthenon for failgold, but it (Parthenon) ended up taking only 3 more turn to complete after the chops so finished it in 100AD it to stack more GPP in Berlin, where I actually completed GLib/NE. It also cranked some settlers and continued to be useful banking failgold into other projects.

Threw down some mines in Berlin and chopped 1 BFC and one +24h forest to get GLib with a 3 pop whip at 0 AD and NE by 200AD. Hamburg is getting ready to complete GS #4 in this shot at the same time as Compass; Machinery, Optics, and Astro (2 bulb) will be acquired that turn as I've self-teched Calandar/MC/IW by this point already.

Ready for it...

And done. You can see what kind of GPP powerhouse Berlin is too with PHI + GLib/NE, only three turns behind Hamburg (with just a Library alone it was 9+ turns behind). That GS is planned for Philo in order to add Pacifism as well if I snag Taoism, which is still up for grabs at the moment.

Whip a couple caravels and meet these two gents not long after.

I indeed get Taoism and march the missionary down to spread in Berlin for Pacifism since I just completed Code of Laws. I had a ton of failgold coming in around this point during the push to Compass that allowed me to go full blast through Currency, CoL, CS, Paper, etc. from things like Mids, Colossus, MoM etc. stuff that I really had no shot to beat the AI to and was banking into before Currency. After a last whip or two for westward expansion it's the big switch into HR/Caste/Pacisfism since I picked up Monarchy from Mansa, and nobody I know is going to remotely be near Astro before I can drop off a surprise attack to kill them.

Trade Route incomes are already helping a ton, though the big winner here was the PHI trait and being lucky enough to have marble. Even though I'm sure Elephant/Treb would be more than enough to end the game here with a quick Engineering bulb out of another GS, I still want to try to Lib Steel and crush them even more, for fun. So planning to bulb Education, and even though Paper ruins a Chemistry bulb, I still have a ton of failgold in Shwedagon Paya and Statue of Zeus waiting to pay out that should help tech through some of Gunpowder/Engineering/Chemistry/Liberalism, and Augustus is on the map so I can expect those to actually be built soon. It's pretty clear to me that this turned out quite sloppy but I'm so far ahead it doesn't matter. I really don't know what I'm doing anymore, but I am crushing the AIs in tech.

Spoiler End position :

One bulb into Education already, and one GS was just generated for something else (Golden Age to push research up? Printing Press or SciMeth aren't very useful at this point). I don't know what to do with all my GPP potential, though trying for a GM could help pick up Nationalism if I burn the GS on Printing Press now.

Spoiler Berlin: full growth vs. sustainable GPP output :

This confused me a little bit...I was sure you could pass irrigation through a city tile (saw that in one of AZ's videos I think) to the other side and that's the whole reason I planted Duisburg (bottom of the picture, underneath the overlay) down next to that lake: it has an irrigated farm on one side and the tile it's on has Fresh Water, but I can't farm the plains to the west of it. Maybe because it's a hill tile it's planted on? Either way kind of a bummer since I would have been able to actually get some use out of Dortmond other than eternally working a gold mine, and somewhat improve the weak land right in the middle of the continent. Oh well.

 

[salty mud]

I am also going to chalk this game up to a loss.

Spoiler :

Despite being on reasonably friendly terms, the English Empire launched a surprise assault against me. They took my gold city of Munchen and razed it, surprisingly, and this had quite an effect on my empire. Their stack of knights was easily repelled by my cuirassiers and I resettled the city, but it was the first blow.

My northwestern cities then rebelled against me. Since I took them from the Iroquois long ago, they've never been fully happy and had finally had enough, citing distance from my capital as reason to secede. Again, I was able to beat them down and regain control, but it distracted me from the bigger picture for a while. Whilst I was dealing with internal strife, Augustus was gobbling up England and becoming very powerful indeed.

This is where I called it a day. My original plan was to invade England and vassalise them, then use them as a springboard to attack Rome. My distractions above however kept me busy. I was leading in science so decided to go for a science victory, I completed the Apollo Program and start building spaceship parts. Then I realised Augustus had also completed the Apollo Program (though I can't remember seeing the notification, otherwise I would have stopped earlier) and completed 2 casings on the same turn.

A difficult, but challenging, map overall. A good experience and fun to share here with you. I look forward to the next game.

When will the next NC game be live?

 

[ArchGhost]

Done.

Spoiler Finale :

This game really reinforced how much I hate intercontinental warring. Even with as much of a massive power spike as cannons, the fighting just grinds on as the AIs resist with the extra time to spam units afforded by the logistics of it.. Augustus capitulated even while at I was still at war with Toku and that took forever just because he was so big and had so much of his continent compared to church.

In comes some of that failgold I had talked about, as I pre-load Liberalism after popping a Golden Age with that waiting GS (for more research and to pump out a GM for a trade mission to make it through Chemistry) . At least the IND AIs are predictable enough to be useful for something.

Lib Steel next turn. Having flipped back into Slavery + OR during the Golden Age, I've been busy whipping Forges/Courthouses and an initial invasion fleet. Cannons are gonna roll on Mansa and he won't even know what's hitting him. Heroic Epic in Berlin is cranking a Musket pretty much every turn with the overflow from each previous one, while other cities whip cannons as they can.

Yeah...there's a single Axe in that city. Pants down. I subsequently pick them up and sail them around to Awdaghost and I also land another attack group to take the unseen city to the east, south of that fish.

So predictably, he gives before I even mange to land a 3rd attack group to take a 4th city. Even with Knights at his disposal to be annoying, I guess he figured it was too much. Nationalism for the Taj going on in the background; Mansa is the only one who can even tech it so it's pretty much locked. Traded for Guilds and Banking in order to reach Free Market, and picked up Theology for Theocracy to get CR2 Cannons and Drill 2 Muskets out the gate. Being able to steer Mansa away from Economics guaranteed I'd get the GM (which I ended up forgetting about), and would be a welcome switch in the Taj Golden Age.

Hannibal's turn. I picked up both attack forces from Mansa's continent, snagged some reinforcement on the way past Berlin, and dropped to hit both cities at once. Hannibal's tiny response stack of catapults and (lol) chariots gets shredded south of Thapsus 3 turns into the war and he immediately taps out. For his reasonable cooperation he gets gifted both stacks of attackers, his cities back, Iron resource, and quickly gifted up to cannon tech so he can pound on Tokugawa for the rest of the game while I attack the other continent with my continued build up back home.

Church's turn. Actually a bit of a hiccup here as he immediately took Coventry back with a stack of Knights + Elephants + Trebs against that one scary Musket. So in response I vaporized his stack (while there's only about 8 muskets here there are about 15 cannons) and burnt it down this time, and that was enough for him to give up. Drill really is a great promotion for this type of post-cannon mop-up work on the Muskets, especially against PRO enhanced Longbows; canceling out at least some of the first strikes of the bow units means very few of the Drill II muskets even took damage. I think I read about that regarding Tank warfare (drill units for clean up), but it works here too.

Church will be gifted up to cannons as well as I prepare to declare on Augustus. He already has a good production base and tons of Knights running around with leftover Elephants (using my Ivory trade from before my DoW, oops) to counter Augustus' Knights, so I'm keeping my stacks to hit the Caesar in three columns instead and end the slow, grinding, cannon warring faster.

Hannibal actually getting something done over there. In true vassal fashion though, he would fail to do anything else, and the classic highly-backward Toku would actually rally, make it to Gunpowder, and push back (unsuccessfully) for Satsuma by the time I came over to collect my 40 war success points to end it.

The north side attack column that just razed cities along the coast up there at the point of DoW. There is a counterpart at the south side of the continent and every thing newly landed/coming over pushes right into his heartland using Church's road network, gifting away everything it captures to either him or a new colony (Alex).

The entire war only took 13 turns but felt like it took forever with the logistics involved. Augustus was willing to cap after losing his wonder nest Rome (the 3rd city to fall), but was too big as he got the better of Churchill in the land grab on their continent. So instead I had to whomp on him until he was 8 cities poorer. Sheesh. Nothing left to do but go secure Toku's surrender and win.

With a fresh force dropped off from the homeland into his Northwest, and the veterans from the central continent landing in the East, Toku sues peace to end it after losing only 2 cities and suiciding his stack into the eastern contingent.

Good riddance to intercontinental shenaningans. Now I can go back to slowly advancing through my Emperor/Marathon/Huge/18 civ Pangaea I had going on at the same time, and peruse some of the other player's playthroughs.

@ArchGhost

Spoiler :

Skipping AG here is really very costly. You had your first settler built t35 and second t43. By then you had chopped 4 forests and done one 2 pop whip. If you open AG-AH and improve corn first, first settler can be out t33 and 2nd as early as t39 with no chops or whips.

You had a worker out as well, but that didn't really help you at all, since it mainly had been chopping to repay it's own cost. The archer choke is also very questionable. On monarch you can choke with a single warrior for quite a while. He won't attack you on forest hills and as long as you are there he won't do much with a worker. And the question is, should you really keep choking him so that he does nothing but build more archers, or should you let him build more workers for you to capture and another city for you to capture. As long as you are choking him, he is piling up archers in capital. If you instead take a cease fire, he'll build you another city and move archers out of capital with the settler. Another city would likely also give you much better worker stealing opportunities.

The other thing with the corn farm is that it is usable by your 2nd city as well. In your game, t50 Hamburg is still at pop 1 and working the recently improved corn to grow onto the gold mine, which it apparently was working until corn was online. With the corn farm in place earlier, it could have been pop 3 and working both gold mines several turns before t50. This alone will put the AG opening ahead by some 100 beakers by t50. Factor in the research bonus towards AH you get from having AG first and skip Archery, then you are 200 beakers ahead with useful research. And this snowballs to put you still much further ahead 50 turns later.

The nice thing with openings is that there is no need to speculate, it can all be tested. I've done quite a lot of testing over the years, only to find that strongest food tiles first is the way to go. The exceptions are very very rare.

Thank you so much for this kind of detail in response, numbers, the "whys" etc. I'm not very speculative and can't see the bigger pictures, but I am analytical and this kind of info really helps to me to understand a game of this complexity. My first inkling that something was wrong was seeing my low beaker count at turn 100, and then today how far behind I was on Writing compared to another poster on up on IMM. It ended up not mattering but that's hardly a reflection on anything other than the difficulty level I feel.

You just need some kind of commerce to finance the early war and stay somewhere near tech parity, and this map doesnt really allow for that. I suppose you could go to early war and go for astonomy but it would be harder and difficult to balance.

Spoiler :

Don't forget that Frederick is Philosophical! GP are one of the most efficient ways to tech in low commerce land and PHI leaders get a significant boost to that; just get you a Library in a couple unimportant spots with at least +4 food surplus (or spots stronger than +4 food that can still grow on top of running scientists) and run a pair of scientists in the cities in tandem so they roll in regularly for a time. We even had Marble on this map to try for Great Lib. The caveat is that you're kind of limited to what the Scientist bulb line can give you if you don't want/can't give up Slavery to run Caste. In this case that limitation is fine because going Astro is a strong play on isolated/semi-isolated starts, or you can go Lib for something like Cuirs in order to kill Napoleon first by avoiding Machinery.

 

[bdubbs]

Taking another stab at this, this time on emp, normal speed.

to 975 BC turn 76

Spoiler :

Tried the SIP start this time.

Tech > AG > AH > BW > Wheel > Pottery > Archery > Writing > Fishing > Myst > Math > Masonry

currently working on construction, which should take about 10 turns, and I'm about to scout out Napoleon to see what he's got going on.

I have 4 cities, Napoleon has 3. I decided to settle my 2nd city right in Napoleon's face and grab some good land by putting Hamburg on the PH in the middle of all the FPs to the NE. Munich in between the two gold to the east, and Cologne on the fish + jumbos hill. I have 6 warriors 2 archers and my original scout, lost one warrior to barbs. I have some spawn busting to the west but its not great, but enough that if I have to get some archers whipped I should be okay.


I just popped my first great scientist and I'm trying to figure out what the best way to use him is. I'm not used to playing games where I'm relying on GPs often. Whats the most useful thing to do with a GS at this point? I have 15 beakers in Berlin and Munich and don't see an academy being a big help right now. I could pop alpha and try and trade some techs before the war, it also makes it easier to get to currency. Settling GPs never seems to be the right answer, and the last option is save him for some tech down the line.

can anyone link me to a good article about how to use GP effectively?

 

[bdubbs]

to 450 AD, could use a couple recommendations for settling

Spoiler :

I seem to have taken too long to get my war started. I had a chance to hit archers with elephants and ended up fighting some metal units, I also built far more units than I needed to win this war, I probably could have done it better if I split into two stacks. The war has currently been on for 21 turns, but it will be over shortly. I took 2 cities and razed 3, there are two smaller western cities left.

My units are ready to take Marseilles this turn. I'm considering keeping it where it is to save me a settler since it leaves room for the corn/fish city and the double fish city north. The more I look at it the more I think having a city that shares the corn and works the copper makes a lot of sense here. So possibly I could put a city on the PH 2W of the corn or move Marseilles 1E and put the city on the PH 1N of the corn. Any recommendations on a course of action?

I don't see any reason not to keep Chartres other than the maintenance, for the sake of saving turns on settlers I'll keep it. Settling one more city on the jungle rice and horses is the only thing that seems to make much sense here.

[/IMG]

My conquered lands are building infrastructure and I'm thinking of having a size 3 double gold city to give me an economic boost.

My biggest challenge right now is what to do with this big empty piece of map. I can settle coastal and get the wine and marble but I'm just not sure what to do with the rest of it. Any recommendations are appreciated

edit: Now that the war is over I have to recover my economy. I currently have 26 gpt in unit costs, now that I have the continent conquered should I hold on to any of my elephants / cats?

 

[MeowZeDung]

Immortal, to 375BC/t100

Spoiler :

I decided that a 4th city wasn't worth it, especially with seafood in the outer ring of one site I was eyeing, and Napoleon eager to settle the sheep/wine spot for me (Thanks buddy! Oh, you decided to settle the fish/gold/ivory city for me too? Neat!). I'm not sure what the norm for city count when elepulting is, but I felt comfortable with 3 here because of all that wonderful gold, plentiful chops, and strong production tiles. Tech path was Writing>Math>Masonry>Construction>HBR>Currency>CoL.

I don't think my preparation for (quick) war was optimal for a couple reasons:

• I wasn't sure how best to use a GS here. I teched pretty quick without needing to bulb math, so I ended up putting an academy in my second city w/ double gold and a riverside grassland cottage. Nice boost in the short term, but not great long term and probably not the ideal play here. I would have been far more hesitant if it wasn't NC or we weren't playing a PHI leader. I think the better play might have been to tech HBR while GPP were building up rather than beeline construction. A bulb would have probably made for a quicker DoW.
• My library chop/whip timing didn't sync with my teching like it should have.
• I thought I was being cute by not opening borders with Napoleon since I didn't really need the trade routes, but a couple turns before declaring I ended up doing it anyhow to scout out his land. Would have been better off just getting the trade routes up and running.

At any rate, I invaded around 650ish BC and had little trouble; lost 4 catapults and 1 elephant. He's down to his last two smallest cities, one of which I plan to raze unless there's seafood I can't see yet.

CoL will be finished in a couple of turns, and cheap courthouses will be built empire wide. I think there's room for about 12 decent cities on the continent, maybe 15 if I'm looking to max out my city count. However, I think the name of the game after Napoleon is gone will be an Astro beeline, and I don't want to expand too quickly.

The top city in the wonders screen has the Mids, the Oracle, the Great Wall, and the Hindu Shrine. Confucianism went pretty early, so I'm guessing whoever it is Oracled CoL and is doing just fine for themselves. Might be a big challenge.

 

[MeowZeDung]

Immortal, to 800AD/t150

Spoiler :

This is a weird map.

I finished off Napoleon and started my westward expansion. I'm currently at 13-14 cities and just finished optics a few turns ago. The extra vision over ocean tiles revealed Mansa (I could barely see his culture a handful of turns earlier). At first I was excited since I couldn't ask for a better trading partner, but the tech trading screen informed me that trades weren't allowed I didn't see anything about that in the OP, and while I don't have alphabet, it seems inconceivable that Mansa wouldn't have it this late, right? I am confused. I traded maps with him and saw that he's been isolated and presents a juicy target.

3 triremes were upgraded and are exploring W, SW, and E. I can barely see either WvO or Hannibal's borders to the East, and will meet them next turn. Calendar in a few turns, then astro. If the map is indeed set to NTT, then trade routes are going to be very important.

I stole Buddhism from Napoleon, and Mansa has a monopoly on ALL the other religions (he libbed Divine Right)

My second great person ended up being an Engineer. . . hmmmm

All of this leads me to consider the following options:

• Beeline Steel after Astro, crush Mansa, then
  • Leverage obscene amounts of Shrine gold to invade the rest of the world
  • Infect other civs with conflicting religions to keep them at odds with each other while I prepare my invasion

OR

• Beeline Steel after Astro, crush Mansa, then
  • Spread Buddhism
  • AP Cheese

OR

• Beeline Steel after Astro, crush Mansa, then
  • Use my engineer to rush the UN
  • Spread religion strategically for diplo bonuses

All of these options seem to have a common theme I just don't see a scenario where destroying Mansa isn't the best option, except for maybe peace vassaling him (possible if I adopt his religion/civic and start conquering others). Space is also an option, but I don't have that much spare time. I guess I'll see the other AI and make a decision from there. I know there's some LP's out there of this map already, so I might just go watch the first parts of those to see how better players handled the map before I continue.

 

[SittinDown]

Immortal to turn 100 -

Spoiler :

• Had thought of Elepult on Napoleon, but because we're semi-isolated, I thought it would be better to go economic, so I built GLH, settled a few more cities, including the Corn far to the West, and did some diplomacy to get Nap to pleased. (Though he'll still DOW me at pleased).
• Techs -> Math (bulbed), Alpha -> Currency -> COL. Philo went very early compared to where I was, assuming someone went religious tech towards it from the Oracle.
• In about 20 turns I'll pop coastal borders to the South and be able to trade with Mansa.
• Priorities -> food poor, except the capital, so getting windmills earlier than usual might be strong. Might save Napoleon for Curs.

Next steps:

 

[Gasp]

I played this one on Immortal until T168 and I don't think I'll have the motivation to go on with war.
I read some posts here saying they can't win but I tend to think my game is winnable.
I see 2 game-changing factors here:
- dedicating too much hammers early into killing our close neighbor;
- building the GLH.

Spoiler :

I started with a SIP and did pretty much like everyone else, meaning 2nd city in between the 2 gold and a 3rd city close to Napoleon (I settled on the PH to grab all resources). Before settling this 3rd city I stole a worker to Napo which slowed him a lot I think. Then I settled a 4th city on the south-east coast to have both Elephants. And finally a 5th city next to the Horse which allowed me to meet Mansa pretty early.

I went with Ag>AH>BW>TW>Pottery>Fishing>Sailing>Masonry>Writing>Math>Construction>Sailing>HBR>Archery...

My goal was to Elepult Napoleon. I took 5 city of him without trouble and kept them all.
I should mention I built the GLH in 725 BC, pretty late but it helped a lot as always. Except for one, all my cities are coastal.

I couldn't bulb Astro which explains why I had it pretty late (1000AD). I run HR + Caste + Bureau for a while now. This allowed me to have plenty of GP.

Until a few turns my power ratio was way above Mansa's. Now he's close to Gunpownder but I feel like he's more busy building all wonders rather than an army. So I estimate having good chances of destroying him if I decided to attack.

I'm pretty happy with this game, I may find the motivation to go further
Thank you elitetroops for hosting this new NC

 

[elitetroops]

Looking very good @Gasp !

Spoiler :

Mansa is the only AI with a state religion? Did he found them all??

 

[Gasp]

@elitetroops

Spoiler :

Mansa is the only AI with a state religion? Did he found them all??
This should answer your question

 

[elitetroops]

I think this is the first time ever I see that happen!