So. I'm at -100 happiness. What now?

[Slowpoke]

Well I've tried a deity Companion Cavalry rush on standard time, pangea, only on a huge map to see if it were possible.

Right now, I own half the world, have -100 hapiness, and am forced into war with 4 civs for being the winning civ (which is a bit odd, since siam is almost double my score). I tried keeping some civs alive by not crushing their capitol so I could trade luxs with them, but their gold is trashed because they seem to be overbuilding military to the point of losing gold and disbanding (I suspect the "min army size" in xml does not scale well for mostly conquered civs).

4 problems present themselves:

A)Dealing with the pikemen siam will eventually have. It'll be at least 30 turns until I get longswordsmen unless I waste a scientist on it. Even then, without hit and run and -33 from happiness, longswordsmen aren't very tough.

B)Figuring out how to unload my luxuries on broke civs. Should I gift them cities so they become slightly richer, or will that give them the courage to fight me?

C)Not going bankrupt. Initially I was getting enough gold to buy a CC every 3 or 4 turns from trades/city wealth, but now unit maintenance is rising very fast.

D)Finding where the heck the hanging gardens are. I can't believe there is no wonders of the world info screen, or if there is I can't find it.

Here's my save so far as an attachment. How would you win?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I'd say focus on your own gold, internally generated, maximum TPs, and build markets, Libraries, etc.

 

[Slowpoke]

I'd work internally, but I think siam is becoming a runaway civ. It seems to be doubling score every 30-40 turns. If I piss off siam enough to cause him to surrender, I'll probably make it, so anything I need to do is probably going to have to happen in the next 30 turns.

One thing I'm thing about is declaring on siam, amassing catapults, and hope he suicides himself on a mass of them.

 

[Cyde Weys]

Once you get that far down into the unhappiness hole, you generally don't have a choice but to continue with conquest. Either finish everyone off or die.

 

[Agent327]

... is about it.

(With -100 happiness you´re basically screwed. BTW, there is an Ignore Happiness thread.)

 

[Zelig]

Not having downloaded your save, you can always just raze all your annexed cities. You only need to do enough damage to most of the civs so that they won't take their capital back from you before you win, and for the last ~3 civs, you can take each of their capitals in a single turn after declaring war, depending on location.

 

[JustAnother]

Your best bet is to find where Siam is and war him before he has too much land. The hard part about huge diety single land mass map is that there will always be 1 or 2 AI that will warmonger and get insanely huge early game. Your game is already not as bad , as you have taken the best warmonger civ that is actually decent in the hands of AI. In my games at turn 100 , there will be 1 or 2 AI that are close to 1k points already.

 

[Slowpoke]

Ah well it turns out to be a moot point. Regardless of the fact that I'm in third place, pretty much the entire freaking world declares war on me within 3 turns. You'd think if civs really "played to win" they'd try to help take out siam :/

 

[Civnerd]

Wow, that is achievment in itself.

 

[Slowpoke]

Wow, that is achievment in itself.

Yeah they need a steam achievement "Everyone hates you!"

 

[Ravellion]

Yeah they need a steam achievement "Everyone hates you!"

There is one, but it's hidden and broken.

 

[CTH]

(I have not dll your save but I got some advice that I think will apply) You need to take siam out before they get their elephants. GG helps minimize the effect of unhappiness. I hope that you have taken the honor tree and got double xp and 15% comb bonus, good promotions would also help minimize unhappiness effect. Then longswordmen and a few catapults would prob be the best way to go and go straight for the capitol. Longswordmen should have with a GG and promotions/policies at least 18vs10 on pikemen even with your unhappiness.

 

[stii]

Ah well it turns out to be a moot point. Regardless of the fact that I'm in third place, pretty much the entire freaking world declares war on me within 3 turns. You'd think if civs really "played to win" they'd try to help take out siam :/

To be fair you are more likely to win than Siam by being human

 

[bryanw1995]

siam might not be warmongering as much, you are off the charts on warmonger hate. also, siam could have bribed the others to DOW you. his high score could very well be lots of wonders so he might not even be the top threat.

 

[DalekDavros]

Yeah they need a steam achievement "Everyone hates you!"

Actually, this is what the "Treasure Hunter" achievement really does (despite what its description says). Most people haven't noticed this because the two things (having everyone hate you and finding your first ancient ruin) usually occur at about the same time.

 

[DonChipotle]

I've never played Diety before, so I'm a bit awed by this play style. Is it customary to annex all your conquered cities? What does this do for you? Puppets provide just as much gold from TP's and trade routes, and still provide resources, aside from occasionally making useless buildings.

So maybe you need to annex a city near the front to purchase units out of. But say you did that for only one out of three front line cities, making the others puppets. You could even raze the city once it was no longer on the front line.

Basically, I'm noticing that you have around 100 unhappiness caused entirely from occupied cities. So by using puppets more you could be within range of even happiness. Goodbye combat penalty, hello finishing off the other civs.

(I know this doesn't answer your question. I'm asking my own question about why you went this route because I'm trying to learn).

 

[Slowpoke]

Generally no, you don't annex all your cities. It is, however, a tactic that can work in a very dedicated horseman rush. Horse rushes go so dramatically quick that if you puppet you'll still get well below -10. So you may as well annex, no harm in it. And you need to puppet at least rather than raze, so you can sell your luxs to buy more horses.

However, you do have a point, since I can no longer really sell my luxuries to these hostile civs, I could just raze everything to the ground. Good idea! If I ever go back to this save, I'll try it out, but I'm much more interested in this game atm. While horse rushes are pretty fun and incredibly close games, they're a bit too gimmicky for me XD