Standard Communitas_79 as Immortal America (Tech Trading On). Forfeit on Turn 308.
This was an interesting game in that it was a real rise and fall kind of series. I had a strong start, used tutelary gods to bag Stonehenge and the Pyramids.... and was even able to get HG with a GE. I had a good amount of land to work with, and built up a solid base. I was in a solid 3rd place position for much of the early game.
I went noble truths this game to give it a spin. With Byz and the Celts on my borders providing such a strong wall of pressure, I focused on CS spreads first. I did a tech rush to Education to get the 20 influence per spread and secured the two nearby CS while eroding Byz's pressure. However, meanwhile Byz pressure combined with fealty to create a wall of religious death, and my city quickly started to succumb.
I made a very very poor decision with my beliefs this game, opting for Thrift (normally good for America with the focus on their plot buying) and Symbolism (because more GPP is great, and I figured the 15% pressure removal would help me keep some of the CS I converted). However I should have recognized early on that against Byzantium that is just not going to happen.... and noble truths is a belief where I'm going to be spending so much faith outside of my civ, that I'm not going to invest internally....meaning I should have know my followers would erode. As such, I should have absolutely gone for religious buildings and syncretism if it was an option. Ultimately though, I was never able to reform, Byz had everywhere around me, and could easily outconvert me at every step. It was so bad that even with Thift, at one point with just half my supply filled and all of my TRs running....I still had a -150 GPT deficit! That just shows how little thrift was doing for me this game.
With the arrival of my minutemen and Byz distracted by a big war with the Mayan, I saw an oppurtunity...as their capital was not that far from my border. And so I declared. Byz had a 4 way DP (which seems to be a bug, they are not supposed to be able to have that many together). And so I now faced the Celts, Persia, Byz, and Arabia (which was far enough away that it didn't matter...so it was really 3 enemies). And so the bloodbath begin. I killed wave after wave of troops near Varna....and wave after wave kept coming. For a while, I hilariously would kill two Persian units that landed every round, and just like clockwork two new units would land.... for like 5 turns. And though my minuteman were worth 10 of their units....they had 10 units and more. Meanwhile the Celts made a very impressive push against Boston, and I barely held it (it came down to me killing their last melee unit so they couldn't take it). Over 20 turns and I finally took Varna, but it took another 30 turns before Byz would end the war. My war weariness went through the roof, my happiness tanked, barbs swarmed my capital, killed my TRs and ransacked me. It took making 2-3 public works in every city before my happiness stabilized above 34%. The real demoralizing moment was when Varna flipped back because of revoltion! I took it back immediately, but had to remake the courthouse and walls over all again! The war was ultimately "won".....but at tremendous cost.
Though I recovered, my numbers started to slip. My score fell behind, and the AIs tech and culture started to get a little bit more ahead with each turn. At this point I was incredibly poor for some reason, I had to shift to wealth to hold off bankruptcy.
Ultimately I just ran out of gas. As I was replenishing my forces, Persia redeclared along with its vassal China. Though my minutemen were well promoted, Persia was landing 3-4 fusiliers at a time...some of them with the defense promotions from their immortal days. I just couldn't kill them quickly enough, and my forces were pushed back....and he took Ormus. Now Theodora has declared again, and my eastern line is just too thin to stop her. Now getting pinched from both sides, I can see the writing on the wall. Further, Iroquois has humilated me by having double my base tourism while going Authority, Fealty, and Imperalism (aka the least tourism focused policies you can think of). The power of zoos!
My mistake was in not respecting the coastline. I had seen that Persia had a good navy and had plenty of amphibious troops to troop from the first war....and though I secured my eastern border with a good citadel line, I did not take the effort the put forts and citadels on my coast. So once the amphibious landings began....I had nothing solid to hold them against, and was forced back.
I was simply outplayed this game. GG.
My notes:
- This run of Noble Truths didn't impress me much, but its hard to say when I was so religiously steamrolled by Byz and made some poor belief decisions...so I'll have to try that again.
- The new Ancestor Worship is pretty cool off of a Stonehenge rush (I did it in my last game). You turn the council into the Steele, the first building in every city that gives you both culture and faith...its nice.
- I don't know if the new spy scaling wasn't working, or if its still painfully weak.... but honestly I felt that spies almost did nothing to help me science wise this game. First my initial spies leveled every slowly this game, so it took a long time before I could even use them for stealing. And once I did....yeah compared to old school tech stealing the values are laughable, even when stealing from a person with 6-7 techs more than you.
- The pillage mission just never feels worth it right now, there is always something I would rather be doing with my spies.
- The Schriever's Office nerf doesn't really affect the religious race very much imo....its rare for me to have both the office and an ally up fast enough to be a factor. However, it does matter for the spreads to follow, this game I didn't have any early CS so didn't notice one way or the other.
- My capital was weirdly unhappy early in the game, for a long time. I did have a lot of farms so it must have just been the growth...but yeah very noticeable, normally a Tradition capital is happy as can be, but not this game. Eventually I corrected it and it never came back.
- I am so incredibly happy that my cities can actually build units while unhappy....please god I hope we never go back. Its just better. I am noticing the increase in war weariness, it definitely makes a difference. I don't think its necessary yet, but if we did want to make adjustments I could be comfortable if the global unhappiness penalty to production was increased, that might be reasonable. Not saying we should do that, just noting its an option if we need more penalty somewhere.
per forest is silly to be honest. Great Works only get 3
and I started comboing really ridiculously, there were just storms of policies and techs and great people for a while and it was like riding a monster wave.
fusion reactor; the Orders are already firing pretty hard it's crazy. I opened Fealty, then Artistry, and I plan to finish the middle trees with the policies for specialists to get both 
