Quest for Glory - Deity Challenge #12

[Nizef]

Splatter time

I was not going to post a new challenge just yet. However, this map is too good to hide. This time we are playing as Japan on a Standard sized Small Continents map and the speed is Standard. The idea is to go on a killing spree and achieve a Domination victory. There are two limitations though: you must go Liberty and you must finish the tree before you are allowed to declare war on anybody (that includes city states as well!) Enjoy!

 

[raider980]

Oh good, just finished the GotM and here's another small continents map to dominate on. Although Japan on Deity will be a whole different animal from England on Emperor. Plus Liberty mandate should be interesting; waiting until its done won't be a problem for me, I am terrible at early war.

I would love to be able to see what's NW of that copper to see if moving there and settling on it would be any good but don't want to spent 2 turns moving on Deity. So will SiP.

 

[Megalou]

Oh good, just finished the GotM and here's another small continents map to dominate on. Although Japan on Deity will be a whole different animal from England on Emperor. Plus Liberty mandate should be interesting; waiting until its done won't be a problem for me, I am terrible at early war.

I would love to be able to see what's NW of that copper to see if moving there and settling on it would be any good but don't want to spent 2 turns moving on Deity. So will SiP.

Also, settling on copper will probably deprive us of fresh water.

Fixing the earliest possible date for warfare may actually be an advantage, preventing the kind of sloppy planning that might affect me otherwise.

 

[raider980]

Whew, I resigned T150; I'm so far behind there's no chance of victory.

Spoiler :

And Suleiman keeps sending settlers to my island to settle every little scrap of worthless land. It started out well, I stole a worker from Sidon and stayed at war with them to get more workers. (This is the first game ever that I have too many workers! Without the Tradition opener, the borders expand so slowly that they have nothing to do but get drunk in the pubs.) Oh, is this Hellblazers map? Its pretty rough terrain for Japan and there is an overabundance of Sheep; for some reason hellblazers loves sheep.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

I stole a worker from Sidon and stayed at war with them to get more workers

Did you wait until finishing the Liberty tree before stealing workers though?

 

[Nizef]

@The_Black_Vegetable is indeed right. That was the idea at least to complicate the early game a little bit.

 

[lerrocco]

Did you wait until finishing the Liberty tree before stealing workers though?

Those are the stated rules. I see @Nizef just posted the same.
This is a seriously tough challenge, playing as Japan.
Its a shame warriors cant build work boats, samurai are too late to the party, and a different side of the tech tree for navigation.

 

[raider980]

Oops, I guess it was a double fail. Didn't follow the rules and still failed. Forgot about the rules when I was playing I guess; although I knew I couldn't DoW Sulieman, for example, before finishing Liberty (not that it was an option anyway, I would have been crushed). Glad I wasn't doing well...

 

[fiddlesticks]

Domination Victory turn 218.

Japan grew as a peaceful society based on the principle of liberty and peaceful coexistence with its neighbours. Early trade with England began a millennia long friendship that fostered scientific and economic growth.

During the dark ages, Japan began to develop its naval prowess with skirmishes along the western coast with the evil city-state Sidon. As the experience of its naval commanders grew, so too did Japan's ambitions. With experienced crew and the discovery of navigation, Japan's leaders could no longer tolerate Ottoman and Roman incursions onto Japan's sacred home island and war began (oddly just after Rome and Istanbul declared war on most of the rest of the world - perhaps Japan's diplomats may have played a role in the intrigue).

These local wars gained Japan much needed currency from it's ancient ally England as Ankara and other Ottoman cities were sold to the British East India company for fabulous sums of gold and oil. A series of rapid scientific discoveries led to the discovery of electronics and the construction of mighty battleships crewed by highly experienced captains. These mighty dreadnoughts captured Beijng, Jakarta, Rome, and Carthage. A small detachment entered the bay of Amsterdam through a captured Chinese port and Amsterdam fell.

Finally, the ancient alliance of England and Japan came to an end as the battle-hardened Japanese fleet tore through English defenses in a lightning offensive, leaving Japan as the undisputed masters of the seas.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Haha, cool write-up, @fiddlesticks , and a pretty decent finish time too. I hope to complete my game in a couple of turns more, but I'm not anywhere near T218.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

T286 domination victory. Possibly one of my slowest Deity victories, though it has to be said I usually only out the ones where I get the snowball rolling.

Spoiler Play of the game :

I rarely play Liberty, and when I do, it feels like the struggle this game was. Comparing to Fiddlesticks' setup, I may have oversettled with 6 cities, and I was constantly struggling for happiness and gold. The early game became even more of a struggle by having to build all my own workers, and dealing with the barb camps on my own. When I did finally emerge into the renaissance (I don't recall the exact turn - I don't have all the autosaves anymore since I played half a game of Great Plains Huns in between, and I did not make any game notes), many other civs including prime target Rome already had navigation, and by that time I did not really dare to attack anymore. To make matters worse, I had accidentally sold 5 iron for 40 gold to Elizabeth instead of 1, so I could not build any frigates without warring her either.

In the end, I did not go to war until battleships, and even then my first attack kind of stalled. I took two Roman cities, but I could not make further progress as he got planes by then, and I was still some way off zeros, so I peaced Rome to regroup. In the meantime, I noticed Elizabeth did not have any planes, so I liberated some Ottoman cities but kept Istanbul for myself. I could not directly go after London, since the borders of a Roman city were blocking me.

Finally, when I had more battleships and a carrier of zeros, I could go after Rome again, and on the way to the capital I got a ludicrous deal from Indonesia for a random Roman expand, for which I made this Reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ5/comments/1id4iui/i_hit_the_jackpot_this_time

From then on, it was relatively smooth sailing, as a combination of stealth, X-com, battleships, and nuclear missiles (to soften up China's strong Freedom cities) swept away all opposition. I found this game tough because my navigation timing was bad; frigates on Deity is certainly possible, but you need to get them out early, otherwise the AI spams too many defenses, and their cities become too strong. Red Fort is practically a frigate stopper, although Caeser actually built it relatively late this game. For domination, unless you are really far behind, stealth and X-com is usually the way out, and that's what I reverted to here, although perhaps the battleships with air support might also have gotten the job done on their own.

One weakness in my play is that I don't utilize city state XP farming properly. On the one hand, it feels a little cheesy, on the other hand, my game play is bursting with cheese as it is (selling horse/iron for 2gpt, working stealing, having the AI declare war on the world and then declaring war yourself, taking an AI's gold on the final turn of a friendship and then declaring war the next turn, etc.), and it might have helped my game here. As it was, I did not declare on any CS at all.

 

[lerrocco]

Completely new territory for me!
I just finished the Liberty Tree for the first time ever!

Can I ask advice, since it's my first time?
Its my only chance of a religion, only 1 left, to go Great Prophet, my pantheon is God of the Sea, I didnt expect to get a religion. All my cities have this at the moment.

Great Scientist for the science hit?
GE in the hope a future handy wonder? I got the pyramids in this game.
GA for an early sea exploration, given the map, gold income from finding CS and ship attack, when I finally build a fleet hehe.. or repairs?

I have to leave the game here for a few days anyway. I have no idea how I will get on.

I just started a golden age.

I have been short of money and happiness most of the game so far. I used my caravans for food, not gold. I need to hook up iron and horses too. I have a rag tag army, one scout upgraded to an archer. I got most of my troops to level 3 by farming barbarians. Still a peaceful game, unless I now start a war, hehe..

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

GE in the hope a future handy wonder?

I would have taken an engineer for Petra, if I knew I could get it, but it was gone in my case, and in any case you would have to swim it over to Satsuma,which may be tricky with that Ottoman city that is about to appear on your coast. That was one advantage of the over-settling in my game, I did not get bothered much with AI settlers showing up.

 

[lerrocco]

I would have taken an engineer for Petra, if I knew I could get it, but it was gone in my case, and in any case you would have to swim it over to Satsuma,which may be tricky with that Ottoman city that is about to appear on your coast. That was one advantage of the over-settling in my game, I did not get bothered much with AI settlers showing up.

Thanks, I will look at when Petra pops up in the Tech tree, also if it has been built yet. I am last in most demographics at the moment, well behind in science. Overnight I was thinking the GS is another city's worth of science and I am 3 turns away from starting the NC.
I decided against the GP and probably against the GA. I think its down to a choice between GS and GE
That settler tried to settle on the south coast of my island, I have been tracking him, and he just went back north, and then into the sea, I hope he is going somewhere else. I also wondered if that could be the start of my war campaign.

 

[Nizef]

My five cents: I would probably choose a GS and plant it asap. The GP might be worthwhile if there is something "good" left, like Pagodas or something like that. The GE I would only consider a) to rush NC or b) saving it for something appealing down the road.

 

[lerrocco]

I think GS was a good choice.
I declared war on the Ottomans to stop the city build and to ward off his swarm of missionaries. He might have been my first target.
Then Liz sent an invasion army, so I made peace with Suleiman and brought my troops back. The turn after LIz actually declared war I built 4 new Galleass, and easily beat back her invasion. She bought Sidon, they were a bigger threat, but not a serious one.

Peace with Suleiman saw the gradual conversion of my cities to his religion.

I think I can easily get Liz to a peace deal, and take Sidon, but I am far too behind to take this game any further forward. I was gold limited all game and I simply dont know enough civ 5 strategy, however good my wargaming may be and however terrible the AI defending will be.

The Romans settled my island and are currently shipping musketmen my way.. to meet my warriors. I have no cash for upgrades, and way behind in tech and embarrassingly low on fighting units.

I will replay the game, to try for a better start, but I always thought this scenario was beyond me, and it is. I'll stick to the quick domination victories

 

[lerrocco]

Last post from me, I am still out of my depth in here hehe..
I am in this forum to learn civ 5. I learned that quick domination is as easy in civ 5 as it is in civ 4. If you can pull it off. This is my first foray into a longer game. For the experienced civ 5 players, you already know all this!

This game gave an interesting comparison, which I was a little surprised about. In the above game I prioritized Science and ships. I gave up at T134.

In this game I decided to ignore science and ships and build up an army. My surprise is that I am still the same number of techs behind the leaders. My current science is not that far behind my previous game, though I built libraries and the NC much later.

I only settled 3 cities, leaving the rest of the island to be colonized, to invite my first target to come to me. (Suleiman, it turns out).

This game I decided to go for a religion, after a 30 faith ruin. I have tithe and pagodas, and built Stonehenge. I have no religious buildings but Sri Pada and Stonehenge and the 1 faith from god king are sufficient. I spread the religion and all my cities have pagodas. This game Suleiman's cities are converting to my religion, and I have tithe, so thats a big difference from last game too.

I had the free GS at the same turn, 96, and immediately declared war on Sidon. For 34 turns I trained my compbows. I can now upgrade 5 of them to crossbows and I will attack Suleiman. The plan is to keep Rome sweet, go after Istanbul and then London (by which time my xbos will also have logistics, or I may take a couple of early range instead to combat the Longbows). My bowmen are mostly level 3, with my upgraded scout at level 4.

This game I settled on the Copper and have had enough money all game. This was a big difference from my first game. 2 gpt for 100 turns is 2 free compbow upgrades, after all.

I am still last in most demographics but I still think I have a chance in this game, depending on Rome. He could wipe me out, so I will try to avoid that. If he invades, he will have Suleiman's cities as first target, I am going to leave Suleiman's southern cities where they are, if I can capture London, thats my route to the rest of the world.

I really am limited for time in the real world now, I will keep chipping away at this game, not expecting to win, but hoping to learn more strategy, I never usually climb this high on the tech tree.

Now I have xbows I will beeline for a navy, which should be online by the time I take London... hehe.. if I get that far. Suleiman first, the war is about to begin.

This screenshot is 4 turns before the one I posted in my last post, for a comparison.

The war on Sidon also gave me 2 generals, the first of which allowed me to build 2 iron mines and the marble.

 

[Megalou]

Galleasses was the big beeline for me, to the extent that samurai was a mere distraction. I did have hopes of a swordsman being upgraded to samurai by opening The goody hut on the island north of our starting island, but an English scout beat him to it. I had used it as a training grounds for the growing fleet of galeasses, but they did too good a job Blowing up barbarians, so that English scout saw his chance before my swordsman arrived.

Anyway, I used 11 galleasses to capture Rome, while some others defended and plundered as many as 5 cargo ships. This plundering was overwhelmingly nice, because money was always a problem in the early stages of this game. Not one of the 11 galeassess perished, although many were taken down to just a tenth of their full strength. The elongated shape of the Roman lands seems to work in my favour.

Next I have to capture Antium as well, or I will not reach decisive peace with the Romans as their huge army comes back from War against William, a war that was naturally instigated by me. if this succeeds, I think I will win the game, the Romans being the strongest AI up until now. But it’s already past turn 200 iirc so I will not be near fiddlesticks brilliant result.

To be continued.

 

[Megalou]

Galleasses was the big beeline for me, to the extent that samurai was a mere distraction. I did have hopes of a swordsman being upgraded to samurai by opening The goody hut on the island north of our starting island, but an English scout beat him to it. I had used it as a training grounds for the growing fleet of galeasses, but they did too good a job Blowing up barbarians, so that English scout saw his chance before my swordsman arrived.

Anyway, I used 11 galleasses to capture Rome, while some others defended and plundered as many as 5 cargo ships. This plundering was overwhelmingly nice, because money was always a problem in the early stages of this game. Not one of the 11 galeassess perished, although many were taken down to just a tenth of their full strength. The elongated shape of the Roman lands seems to work in my favour.

Next I have to capture Antium as well, or I will not reach decisive peace with the Romans as their huge army comes back from War against William, a war that was naturally instigated by me. if this succeeds, I think I will win the game, the Romans being the strongest AI up until now. But it’s already past turn 200 iirc so I will not be near fiddlesticks brilliant result.

To be continued.

Loading the game, I can see that I did not recall correctly, since Rome was taken on turn 137. But there is a lot that remains.