NEW Deity Challenge - #3 - The Arabs

[consentient]

What is the NQ mod? How do I install it?

For this challenge you will need NQ Mod 10.0 and HB Maps 7.1

Instructions for installation and changelogs are available on those links, as well as the downloads themselves.

NOTE: Install the Mod as a local, SP mod. The MP mod has to be installed like a DLC and is 'on all the time'. For this series, and SP gaming in general, I recommend the SP only Mod.

Note: This Mod only works with Windows. Mac players are advised to use Bootcamp to install Windows alongside OS X if they wish to explore the full world of Civ 5 BNW Mods.

Why The Arabs?

They have great potential for fast domination with one of the best UUs, as well as powerful benefits from religion, and trade

What do I have to do in this game?

Win, whichever way you like! Suggested VCs are Domination or Science, but you can do whatever you like. The focus should be on winning. After that, I guess the best players will be competing for finish times.

About the map

Spoiler :

Type: HB Pangaea
Size: Standard
Theme: Opponents chosen. No alteration to the rolled map.

Difficulty:

Spoiler :

Medium

Starting location picture in attachments

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

Looks like the Camel Archers have Stealth Bomber support in the pic! (Could you shrink down your cool pics? Forces full-screen which makes it hard to read long text lines.)

 

[consentient]

Looks like the Camel Archers have Stealth Bomber support in the pic! (Could you shrink down your cool pics? Forces full-screen which makes it hard to read long text lines.)

The IMG tag on this forum doesn't seem to want to accept values like 'height' and 'width'. Any idea how I do it?

 

[Browd]

All you can do is spoiler the image, or shrink it off-line and re-upload it.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

This is an amazing map! I urge everyone to try it out. I won't spoil anything but I love the historical flavor Civs, I love the turf, having a really solid game so far with 5 cities plopped down @ T50, started producing Settlers the moment I hit Pop 3 because there were no Growth tiles around anyway.

Went Liberty (as always), BO was Scout/Mon/Scout/Buy Scout/Shrine (as always), then built my first Settler without CR, got a free one and rushed 2 more, only four turns each with a Pop 3 cap. Not bad.

I DOWed western neighbour the moment I found him. With eastern neighbour I waited for a Worker steal with an upgraded scout. Trained my units against w neighbour while lurking around e neighbour for more steals. Eventually ended up getting 2 more workers from e neighbour and 1 settler from w neighbour aswell as a highly promoted spear (upg ruin) and warrior. Met all civs by turn 50 or smth like that, my scouting was really good that game. Met all CS by T60.

Religion this game is crazy. First rel went T30, then T35, then T40. Jesus Christ that's not normal Second to last went T60. Now only 1 is left between my and northern neighbour. He doesn't have a Pantheon, but I'm super scared of Hagia Sophia.. Decided to invest in Shrines, so had absolutely no units T70.

Decided to peace out w/ e neighbour after getting 4 workers in total. Still at war with w neighbour. I got Pyramids. So with 2 Workers from w neighbour, 4 from e neighbour, 2 from Pyramids, 1 from Lib SP and 1 from CS it's a total of 10 Workers without having built even a single one. Then T70 northwest AI declares on me, then one turn later northern neighbour. Then western neighbour moves his troops in, too. I had no defense aside from a Spear and a Warr, nothing. I still managed to hold off ~3 catapults, 3 composites and 4 or 5 warrs coming in from the north, but the combination of the two UUs with swords and catapults from the west was too much. AI DOW seemed kinda random, especially from northwestern neighbour. It was late and I paid no attention to demographics is my excuse. Gonna go 20 turns back, really not in the mood to play this out. I invested all my hammers into 2 early TR to northern neighbour for science (quick camels) and both just died when he DOWed me. So almost 30 turns of production in first expo were gone.

 

[Puhi]

T259 CV..... for the AI

Spoiler :

Ethiopia

won a CV. I was 6 turns away from stealth bombers. Give me 1 turn to upgrade them, and in 8 turns I would have had the capital, putting a huge dent in his tourism. I already had xcom everywhere. Sooooo close.

I went Liberty, and got 6 really nice cities with great luxury variety. Failed to get a religion, as religions went so fast it was ridiculous. I did conquer the capitals of

Spoiler :

Assyria and Morocco.

I would really like to win this, just considering how. Should I try getting my science up earlier? Start conquering earlier so I can reach the target with conventional bombers? Focus on defensive culture?

That was a nice challenge for me. I'm not very good at deity, but I very nearly won this one.

 

[Sclb]

Oh yea, this is consistent with what I see. AI are much better at winning peaceful in this NQmod, and actually is a threat. It makes complete peaceful play difficult and probably will include war to take out the leads if your science isn't up to speed.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Oh yes definitely, last night I actually lost to a T261 Egypt CV on NQ Immortal (tried OCC science). I was legit impressed

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Domination is indeed a lot of fun here. It's t150, and I control 4 capitals. Decided against promoting logistics camels to range, since they will eventually become cavalry. I must say, camel archers killing defense 45 cities with ease is a little ridiculous, but I have Honor and GG's. Anyway, artillery is coming in 14 turns (oxfording), so I will not need ranged camels for cities anyway. I just need to the gold to upgrade the cannons and build some zoos and annex cities with courthouses, and I will be ready to tackle the AI who took another AI with the great wall. I think I am the first to hit industrial with a bulb (even though my science is garbage), so artillery should be enough to finish.

The only foreseeable problem is going to be that guy who is furthest away and who will be really strong at

Spoiler :

Rifling

.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Did you go a 2-city Honor, Chariots -> Camels kind of game. It's easily the most fun method in the NQ

 

[beetle]

I would really like to win this, just considering how.

From my experience with the DCL CV runaways, it is not you so much as RNG. I have replayed DCL maps and won not by finishing sooner but by griefing the future leader earlier. So reload from early in the game and never give them a DOF and work harder to bribe them into wars and others to DOW them. It does not take much to get very different results. Aside from that little bit of diplomacy, you can play exactly the same as you did before to get the eight turns you need.

 

[consentient]

T177 Victory

Nothing special about my strategy. Built Chariot Archers galore and went through the capitals as fast as I could. I did, however, spend more time over deciding the move of each unit than I ever have before, so that may be the single biggest contributor to my decent finish time. I also pushed the UU as far as possible, suiciding nearly all of them at the site of the penultimate capital (where the AIs UU made mincemeat of them, as I knew it would be suboptimal to expect them to go all the way back West and take part in the last battle. I hit Dynamite a few turns before victory, so rush bought a few of them, and a few cavalry, and took out the last (NW) capital in a couple of turns. Oh, and I'd punched a corridor through to the cap with 3x GGs. Frankly, I felt a bit guilty. He had been my loyal friend all game, with a full compliment of bright green modifiers and he never looked likely to denounce I wonder if this was because I welcomed his religion?

Sweep order was:

Spoiler :

Assur
Babylon
Marrakesh
Thebes
Carthage
Addis Ababa
Persepolis

Liberty-Commerce, of course

I've been experimenting with a new BO for Domination games that goes like this: Scout, Monument, Scout, Worker x3. There is usually even space for an Archer or two before Collective Rule that way, and you get a great start improving things like Horses.

Sorry for the lack of pics. I only took the one somewhere in the middle of the sweep, but it gives a good idea of how large my army was.

Final thoughts:

Spoiler :

The finish time might lead some to conclude that the map is easy, rather than Medium, but after this victory I replayed trying for Science (to see what it would be like for those that opted for peaceful play) and found it was tough going. So it evens out to be a medium, IMO.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

I ended on t207, taking Addis Ababa with infantry, landships (who were once brave camel archers), and aircraft. Fun and easy map, though not building horsemen slowed me down early on, since the AI's in this mod actually focus slow melee units. Liberty -> Honor -> Rationalism -> Autocracy. Finished all policy trees, but did not get far in Autocracy.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Domination Victory @ 199

I never planned for domination, I wanted to win a domination assisted CV or SV, but just ended up taking so many capitals that I figured domination was faster. Past T150 I built nothing but units/smiles and managed to finish the game with Camels still being relevant. Nothing more than Camels and Arty was neded, not even against the Rifle UU with Order and UA bonus.

I will do a detailed write up later, just letting you know I very much enjoyed your map and I'm pretty happy about my sub 200 win, that rarely happens for me since I have little experience with domination.

 

[DanQuayle]

I decided to tried out st412's suggestion of 2-city Honor. And I must say it turned out into an amazing game

Spoiler :

The terrain on this map was pretty much ideal: mining luxes, lots of production and most importantly lots of horses. Assyria had the largest army early on also going 2-city Honor, so I chose to settle toward Morocco who had went Piety. Chariot Archer rushed Morocco. Morocco didn't have many units, but the arc/terrain wasn't ideal. This was the hardest part of the game. Meanwhile, Assyria kept asking me to join him in a war against Persia. I accepted. I then moved my troops toward Assyria and DoW'd him starting a tree-way war. I only poked at his unit to generate money until Chivalry. Constant war and keeping killing units seems like a must for Honor. AIs were particular friendly toward me in this game (which is unusual for me in a Dom game). Bazaars allowed me to make a lot of trade deals. Also, never before in a game have I demanded so many tributes from CSes. I had 3K in the bank before Chivalry, then I realized I had forgot to make Horsemen.. No problem, rush-bought 2 of them then proceeded to upgrade 21 Chariot archers to Camel archers upon the discovery of Chilvary T105.



Swept the map with two armies
Experienced army went: Assyria, Babylon (religious def bonuses), Persepolis (GW, runaway)
Less experienced army went: Thebes, Addis Ababa, Carthage

Rush bought production buildings, kept making units. I never researched Education, but I was near researching Metallurgy at the end of my game, thanks to Honor finisher. I have never encountered anything tougher than Musketmen. Only Persia and Ethiopia reached Industrialization.

NQ Honor + Commerce + Bazaar deals = Lots of gold

 

[stormtrooper412]

Christ...

 

[consentient]

Nice one Dan! How did you manage to get access to 21 horses with only 2 cities? I had to go 5 city Liberty to get mine. Did you have some CS or what?

 

[stormtrooper412]

Well he did take a few AI cities along the way

 

[DanQuayle]

consentient

Spoiler :

All early game, I wasn't allied (or even friend?) to any CS. I just pilled up my gold. Marrakech and Rabat were good cities to start with a lot of production, but once you add a courthouse (+4f, +4h) and a barrack (+1h), they become even better. The new courthouse mechanic almost makes conquered cities better than your self-founded ones. The added food from the courthouse permitted me to focus on production tiles. In my production push before Chivalry, I was making a Chariot Archer about every 4 turns in each of my 4 cities, so that is one additional Chariot Archer per turn. Also, in my game Morocco was quite weak when I attacked him (only had archers, warriors and swordsmen with a resource penalty). I don't think I lost any unit against him even if it took some time, because of the terrain.

BOs from memory
Mecca: Scout, Monument, Scout, Scout, Settler, Granary, Water Mill, CAs, Library, NC
Medina: Monument, Granary, Water Mill, Library, CAs
Built Barracks and Bazaars at some point when available
Conquered Moroccan cities: Courthouse, Barrack, CAs

Horses
Mecca: 4 horses
Medina: 4 horses
Marrakech: 8 horses
Rabat: 8 horses
Also traded some iron for horses (6?)
At no point in the game, I was limited in my production of horse units, because of a lack of horses

 

[yung.carl.jung]

@Consentient

So you went 5 City Liberty, too? Did you settle similar spots to me? Did it piss off the AI, too? I was triple DOWed in my first attempt and (with a delay) double DOWed in my second, but managed to fend it off.

I didn't go full domination until T150++ when I realized that dom was just going to be far quicker than any other VC