I know I've said this several times in the past previously, but I can safely assert that THIS is the hardest map I've played on deity yet, by far. You need so much luck to remain even remotely competitively viable, especially if you're going for a domination or conquest-based victory. It took me over a dozen tries but I think I've found a way to not get left in the dust and reach a dominant position, with some skill and a lot of luck. This requires former map knowledge and copious amounts of fortune/rerolling too (if you're the type of person to do that) so it's not a totally "clean" playthrough, but I personally am fine with these measures on such a grueling save as this.
FIRST: You must walk your settler for 4 turns - this enables you to found your capital on a hill, in a way that completely blocks Genghis off, while also having 2 food and perhaps more importantly 2 luxury resources (otherwise you need monarchy for happiness and...on a map like this you have neither the commerce nor the hammers for that). You also have to walk your settler in a specific way to meet Genghis on turn 3 instead of 4, which due to the way random seeds work,
gets him to tech a religion instead of going BW first. As well as allowing you to eventually get to pleased with him, this also delays when he gets the bronze in his capital, and therefore greatly reduces very early war plots (like, pre-2000BC). This means that...
SECOND: You can build and walk your settler #2 to the grassland next to the wet wheat without worrying much about defense. You can also then tech sailing -> masonry -> BW without going archery, which enables you to start on GLH faster and increases the chance that you can get in in your 2nd city.
THIRD: After you have GLH, start pumping out settlers. Settle the clam next, then the dry wheat, and last the southeast island. Stop after that - you will hereafter need to prepare for an upcoming war.
FOURTH: Make your way to machinery as fast as possible, for chu-ko-nus. I recommend self-teching MC, building a forge, and then trying to pop either a GM or GE from your GLH city. Both work - if GE, bulb machinery, and if GM, trade mission to tech machinery (and maybe with the leftover gold upgrade some archers). Tech (or if you're lucky, trade for) alpha soon later - you'll need it to tech at all after crashing the economy soon.
FIFTH: It's chu-ko-spam time. Whip your cities mercilessly. You have to be kind of lucky here because if Genghis gets feudalism you're kinda screwed, but barring that, chus do fine against keshiks, catapults, even crossbows. Yes - Genghis getting machinery (as long as he doesn't get engineering) is not a problem, because crossbows at the end of the day are only 6 combat strength without any sort of special city defense, at least from the get-go. They'll increase your losses by quite a bit but be thankful you aren't up against hilled longbows. HOWEVER, to win this war, you MUST build up a sufficient force. Start with AT LEAST 16 units, and don't stop building them until Genghis is crippled (you can leave him with 2 cities on the desert peninsula because they're not worth the time/effort but otherwise completely destroy him). Don't be afraid to take ceasefires and/or near the end, peace treaties for juicy techs. You can stop building units once his main cities are taken out and you still have a sufficient force to take the rest, to build research and limp your way to compass/optics.
SIXTH: Single (or double if you have 2 GS somehow) astro. I recommend saving at least 1 city from whipping to generate that GS. Whip 2 caravels ASAP and try to circumnavigate, meet everyone, pawn optics and soon after, astro for what you're missing. You HAVE to be quick here - if you get less than 2 trades (as in, players to trade with) for each of those techs it's probably game over. I recommend getting as many things as possible on the path to cannons, and also civil service for maces/irrigation (this continent is so food-poor your capital virtually needs irrigated farms). Personally, I got 1090-ish AD astro (IIRC), which was
just fast enough to squeeze trades from JC and Cathy.
SEVENTH: After astro and taking out Genghis, you should have 15-17 cities. This is enough to comfortably reach steel, though again you have to be quick. At this point you're still probably very far behind, so you need to once again trade to (something resembling, at least for a bit) parity. Preferably get things on the way to rifling/communism. Afterwards, whip an army of cannons and maces + phants + trebs. Don't worry about starting the attack with rifles - you're probably very behind by now still, and will only get more behind the longer you wait. Time is of the essence, and despite taking it over completely, your island is still not nearly good enough to win the game (unless you pull some diplo magic like
@Lain, which is legit, don't get me wrong - but the entire point of my replaying this was to find if there was SOME way to win conquest or dom). So you MUST attack someone, and do it quick.
EIGHTH: Attack, and win! If you wait to whip rifles then by the time you attack anyone you face will likely have machine guns, artillery, infantry, maybe all three. And destroyers to completely shut down reinforcements. So once you have about 8-10 ships full of units, just GO. Hopefully you have one or more supermedics from the previous war with Genghis, that you can use to heal without having to cart a GG over. Once you're able to, upgrade to rifles on the other continent, in the middle of your war. Now, who you choose to attack varies. Obviously you want to target someone without rifling (otherwise cavs and probably just rifles can completely shut down your cannons); if you can't you might be forced to wait until rifles of your own. BUT I will say from personal experience - to maximize your winning odds, take on the strongest AI you think you can beat. This prevents a major contender from winning the game, while essentially making all their techs yours (though it may take time to tech up to trade for them). Plus the stronger AIs usually are that way because of their better land, and if you have better land, it increases the hammers and commerce you can get towards contributing to that final late-game push you will need to do on this map. Specifically, on this map I would either target Surry's/JC's or Cyrus's island. In both Lain and my playthroughs, the 2 strongest AIs were found there (though in my game interestingly enough, the situation was flipped such that Giggles got the upper hand on Cathy and Surry was completely crushing JC). A VERY useful trick - if an AI is about to cap another, and you want to declare on the stronger, beg/demand from the weaker AI. The 10-turn peace treaty prevents them from capping because
they aren't allowed to declare on you, allowing you a window to beat the attacking AI enough to where they either become irrelevant or are convinced to peace the attacked AI. I won't go into the specific details of warfare here, but some basic tips - CR maces => rifles make for great attackers, try to avoid getting your reinforcements frigate-sniped, find a way to deal with the AI's army first, and afterwards split your stack but be careful of secondary armies or running out of attacking cannons/rifles. Again here you have to be lucky in that the AIs you target don't go AL immediately and mass-infantry you into oblivion, but to my relief I've discovered that if AIs have oil they just rush combustion (AIs will always rush techs allowing access to resources in their territory), buying you some time - though be forewarned, destroyers will make reinforcing very difficult if not impossible as they can outrun even circumnav + navigation galleons!
NINTH: Take over the rest of the continent, if there's another civ there. That's the only way you can be strong enough to make a final stand against the strongest AI left in the game (probably Cyrus) - and you will need to do that, because 2 islands really only gives you ~50% land area at most.
TENTH: Tech and trade to tanks and nukes. This requires quite a bit of finesse but it's possible to double or triple your effective beaker rate if you trade wisely. In my game I got constitution + econ + physics from JC; and steam power for communism, electricity for AL, railroad/artillery for fission (Cathy helped here), biology for rocketry, and combustion for industrialism from Surry. Needless to say, build ironworks, factories, coal plants, and the appropriate health buildings ASAP. You may also want to build Globe Theater somewhere to deal with emancipation/motherland anger.
ELEVENTH: Assemble a fleet and an ICBM stockpile, and throw yourself at the last enemy! This is the final battle, so throw everything you have at it! Dealing with SDI is tricky, but if you're willing to fudge the system a little (well, a lot here), there's one trick I've discovered. The success rate of an ICBM is dependent on the progression of the random seed much like the outcomes of individual combats...so you can change whether an ICBM explodes or is shot down by changing what/how many combats take place before it, or what deals happened on the turn before. In practical terms, if you're OK with mass savescumming...if an ICBM fails, reload, sacrifice a tank or artillery at a city, then try again, and so forth, until it explodes (or cancel a random deal the turn before for similar effect). You will lose several units that do little or no damage in the process, but in exchange can have a significantly higher nuke success rate...a small price to pay for salvation. I recommend at least 60-70 units for the final assault, a minimum of 10 ICBMs to start, and a preemptive strike to destroy the enemy's main offensive stack(s) on the first turn of the war. After taking one or two cities, switch to tactical nuke production - you can store your nukes in newly conquered cities to nuke the next one, and so forth, until you've cleared the entire continent...or turned it into a radioactive pile of ash.
TWELFTH: Get a few border pops, and then revel in your somewhat ill-gotten but nevertheless
very hard-earned and supposedly impossible, even, victory!
They said it couldn't be done, but as in the movies, Ip Man accomplishes the unthinkable, and unites the world under the glory of the Chinese Empire!
A little something extra - the AI chooses just about the worst time to launch its spaceship...right before I take the capital
.
)
. Saving 1 gold at all cost was just me being overly neurotic for no reason. And I thought "This map is going to be hard, so I need to squeeze out every gold I can" + false sense of security because "nothing happened so far".
