The Deity Challenge Line-up #25 - Venice's Fool

There's a star in the info bar of every capital, so if you have it scouted you can see it just by looking. Over 1 billion? That's awesome. I also found the "which Shaka do you mean" issue annoying, but I'm at the point where it doesn't matter any more.

Spoiler :

I'm in the midst of a very unfocused game! It's been all kinds of suboptimal, with Holy Warriors fielding an army for me while I whored wonders. Now I'm trying to convince the AI to follow Freedom (with only Dom enabled the AI cannot choose Freedom) while on a crazy war path and not razing a single city. Unfortunately, I don't think I can flip an AI with only 1 city despite being Dominant culturally and having passed Freedom as the world ideology. They just have too much of a happiness cushion. I can't wait to finish after the holiday.
 
t200
Spoiler :
I finally busted through Red Shaka's jungle mess with 4 total citadels. By then I had Gats, soon after had Arty and now Rifles. Flight in 3 turns, Prora will be nice (2nd to Autocracy - Teal Shaka has been pretty dominant at times). I probably should have more Arty - only 4 now, I imagine a total of 8-10 would be good so I can have 2 fronts in the middle of the landmass. My plan now is to bust along the northern edge, securing/razing all ports - heading for Busan with navy, letting the army conquer that way by land. It leaves me with an exposed flank, but if I can liberate some Korean cities I should be good. I'm a little worried Real Shaka is going to make peace with Teal and I will be back to 2 Shaka wars.

The wonder-fest continues. I am slowly getting more TR up - now I can trade with what little is left of Red Shaka. I am razing a size 10 peace city near my cap as I just didn't want to deal with possible harassment later. I'm having a hard time deciding what cities to keep, and whether or not I should revive other civs, esp Zulu ones. What's the point of being denounced again, I would mainly do it to get their TR and lower costs, maybe get some votes. I don't want to have my roads going thru their territory if they denounce. I'm also debating whether I should MoV puppet one more CS.

Put 2k hammers into WF, and with Chichen Itza I finally ended about 60 turns of GAge. :D With Angor Wat I'm wondering if I should be buying Monuments in puppets, as it negates the culture penalty.
 

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Sun, that was awesome.

Some thoughts about XCOM domination, it seems kind of broken if you set everything up properly. I mean, I produced a massive force of XCOMs really fast and took all caps in 3 turns and nobody saw it coming. How consistently effective is this strat anyway, it definitely feels like one big cheese, I pulled it off fairly easily
 
Domination T187

Finished this one with XCOM rush. Researched XCOM T181 and captured everyone from turn 182 to 187. Can be a bit faster with more premade paratroopers, kind of underestimated the number of scientist I would get.

Spoiler :
 
Some thoughts about XCOM domination, it seems kind of broken if you set everything up properly. I mean, I produced a massive force of XCOMs really fast and took all caps in 3 turns and nobody saw it coming. How consistently effective is this strat anyway, it definitely feels like one big cheese, I pulled it off fairly easily

XCOM/Stealth Bomber rush works basically every time, in my experience. Go tradition and play a turtle science game. I do this sometimes as a bailout on attempts for fast SV that turned mediocre (more fun to conquer the world than get a turn 250-300+ SV).

Most domination attempts can be won with much earlier tech, however: X-Bow rush or Artillery for pangea; Frigates, battleships, or carriers for continents; which is probably why XCOMs aren't discussed much.

It can definitely be a good fall back strategy if you get stuck on a DomV (by terrain or a runaway), or decide to bail on a different victory attempt.


BTW, having a blast playing this map right now (on turn 80 or so), after not playing much Civ lately. Not sure whether to go tanks/planes or XCOMs. I definitely want to drop some nukes, though, on everyone's favorite neighbors ;)
 
ah yes, as a support punch, I had 3 Stealth Bombers. They could only reach as far so they were limited in usefulness, but leapfrogging fixes that I suppose. Plus, by the time I got them, I already had 15 XCOMs loose anyway :D
 
Haha, yeah 15 XCOMs will wreak serious havoc. They are stronger than cities!

If you want to try turtle domination, trad/aut carriers+paratroops on continents is also a lot of fun. Not as fast as frigate rush, but can get turn 250ish win.
 
Well yeah, I organized 5-6 XCOMs with Blitz per city which are good enough to take it out in at most 2-3 turns :D

Also, I took my first two caps using Frigates, the rest were inland :D
 
Played this game,was tons of fun for me ,finished with a bit late domV on t282,though i basically only fought 3 Shaka's and one Sejong(blue Shaka took indonesia Sejong,and Real Shaka took Morocco and Pocatello Shaka xD)
Also, i had a stroke of luck,when i was preparing for war with the real Sejong,he and red Shaka dow'ed me on the same turn,which was also the turn when WC vote resolved,and WF was passed.

That helped very much since we play as Venice and you usually only want to buy those units:),i already had Brandeburg at that point,and was buying march cavs for 290g,so i was able to work the WF and win it,which brought me a finisher in commerce,while already having unlocked tier 2 tennets in autocracy.

Took the real Sejong with a swarm of strong but a bit suicidal cavalries(not one single range or siege unit:) ) made piece with him and red Shaka just to consolidate a bit,dowed them both again the on the same turn the treaty expired,took Sejong's last 2 cities,and then went to finish off the red Shaka,left him with one city in the middle of the pangaea between me and portugal Shaka and the real Shaka,razed 2or 3 of his cities took others.

After that it was waaay easier than i thought it would be ,but i guess that is due to my sufficently strong technology,and not my tactical prowess^^ ,since i had infantry before arties :D(t200 i believe,but after flight for Prora)and a horde of bombers,logistics range bships and other strong stuff.

Also i've flooded the real shaka with landschnekt helicopter gunships(80g,BB/BrandGate/autocracy,but w/o honor discount on upgrades which would have been huge because with it i believe it is mere 400g to get those gunships) i've always wanted to try out that strat,and it is really nice actually since you get a 6 move no cost to pillage unit(i still believe it is much more effective in mp since you can easily pillage the happiness)but still very funny when you swarm them with helicopter gunships,since that is usually the thing the AI does,that and mobile SAM's that is^^

Was a very fun game for me and a good map for newbies at DomV like myself:)
 
What civ will we have next, Acken?
 
Oh yeah, getting Clausewitz might have helped out a bit :D
Actually i had Clausewitz's Legacy,apparently i am just that bad with tactical unit management :)
Here are some pictures of the game.
beginning of the warpath
Spoiler :


40 turns later,15 turns after the expiration(t217) of the peace treaty with red Shaka
Spoiler :

Sp's at the time,ended with 4 more i believe(In autocracy)
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Spoiler :

Last two capitals falling on t282(jeonju as ex korean capital,integrated within the real Shaka's empire:) )
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some stats
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and demographics
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And i almost forgot,all routes were used for gold :)
 
Playing through this at the moment, should finish in the next teen turns or so hopefully.

Spoiler :

This start is insane. I got GL on turn 25, for a T31 NC. I only puppeted Valletta, used the other two merchants to ally the cultural cs to the South East asap. Had tradition finished by turn fifty or so, opened patronage and commerce before finishing rationalism, wonder whored like crazy, and converted the world to my tithe religion (142gpt at one stage) until I got back stabbed by Maria Shaka on T182 (one of only three survivors by this point, red, blue and normal). Was then rush buying frigates and March infantry every turn for ten or so turns and subs in Valletta, used the navy to secure a beach head and then just took the cities generally in one turn each with six infantry. Got gifted some Khans which was nice. Got to radar and used same process but with paratroopers, blue only has four cities left as of T200. Shame there is bugger all oil around, should have puppetted ife and Zurich early but oh well, infantry rush got good enough results. Will keep building paratroopers until my two remaining ras finish which will hopefully get me to xcoms around T210.

Such a crazy dominant game for deity.
 
Spoiler :
Fun game ,I need more practice with venice ,was a first .
I waited for my artillery to start killing everyone :)
 

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T243 DomV
Mucked around a bit since the last update trying to get all three projects for the achievement before wiping out the last survivor. But of course as is always the case when you muck around the ai put 4k hammers into the space station and beat me...

Fun map, nukes and paratroopers can do stupid amounts of damage in 1-2 turns against a big ai. I think I managed to take 8 or so cities off the real/last Shaka in the final turn with about 10 nukes and maybe 20 paratroopers. Blitz paratroopers are seriously my favourite thing in the game I think.

Probably should have gone autocracy instead of Freedom for a quicker finish/more unit spam but not to worry. The number of policies I took in this game was ridiculous, finished Tradition, Rationalism, Freedom, Commerce, Patronage, Honor, Liberty and most of Exploration before T243! Because I got to Printing Press so early, and World's fair was in the first session (about T120) the ai were in no mind to bother taking a break from their warring to attempt it. I dragged it out and managed to propose and pass Cultural Heritage sites as well before the project was complete. I was sitting on over 1.2k CPT whilst my policies costs were just over 2k, popped two writers (one from Globe Theatre) and finished freedom and commerce before the project was over! This map was seriously different and refreshing.
 
Spoiler :
I was more than a little unsure how to proceed in this game, and it took me a while to figure out what the snake in the can was. At first I was expecting 5 barb camps right outside of your starting LOS with barbs ready to ninja those juicy MOVs. Then I met The Real Sejong, and figured I was facing all tough opponents. When I met Polish Shaka, I was wondering if I was going to have to deal with Impis somehow amped up by Solidarity. Finally I met Maria Shaka, and it all made sense.

So what to do with the classic Venice/3 MOV/Petra/Faith/etc. open? Seriously, the only thing that could have made this start more OP would have Mt. Kilo or one of the workable faith mountain NW plopped next to Venice. Then I could have built the Neusch and collected every wonder.

I kinda dislike Venice's UA because I like to expand, although I admit it does give a fairly smooth Diplo win and is a fun change of pace for every VC. I therefore decided to use all three MOVs to puppet early, grabbing the first as soon as it popped a worker and the next two as soon as they improved their luxes.

At the start, I was thinking I should take cities all game and keep my foot down on units. I bought a scout and a worker, then built another scout and a monument. Then I thought, well, the ToA will help me build archers, and will help all my puppets work more trade posts, so it's OK. I lost my mind, and built 19 wonders before I built a single military unit. But, how many games do you get to build the likes of the Hanging Gardens and the Statue of Zeus, let alone hard-build both in the same city? I didn't get the best possible early growth, but turn 89 Education with 5 wonders (6 w/Petra) in the bag isn't too bad (for this map!).

I obviously needed some early army, so I went with DF and Holy Warriors to open, along with Tithe. I followed that up with the Faith from Wonders belief to keep the units coming, and the amped up Prophets so I could get an effective late spread without any early missionaries other than the 3 from Borobudur. I did instigate Shaka into fighting Shaka (if you ask about which Shakas, the answer is yes), but I didn't bribe anyone away and actually had a respectable army just from HW. Polish Shaka DOW'd me before I wanted to go on a rampage, and I took one of his cities just to get him to go away for a while.

As this game played out, I bought more buildings than troops because my troops were quickly elite, and I took my time taking cities at first. Order would probably have best augmented my game, but I went Freedom and it worked. I don't really think it was that much more challenging, just fun to try and convince an AI that can't choose Freedom that it should have. I also decided not to raise any cities, with some vague idea of seeing if I could pull it off and what it might do for my score. I've only read a little about what a time game involves, without having ever tried for one. I did have full Honor, so it's not like I was warring with no help. Frankly though, warring with a tech lead is easy and doesn't require any buffs. I lost 3 gats and 3 tanks the whole game, and except for the initial push with upgraded Holy Warriors, I only used units hard-built in a single city. Freedom has the highest growth potential, and some minor direct and indirect buffs to building an army. There's also acceptable happiness if you build farms or otherwise provide enough food to your puppets to convince them to work specialists.

When war did come on about turn 200, it started slowly with 2 armies of 3 arties, 4 infantry, and some supporting gats that got left behind as garrisons (upgraded faith bought archers/CB). I had built 19 wonders by then too. I switched from food ITRs to a mix of production and gold routes for this stretch of the game. I lost 3 gats, but took down Polish Shaka with just those troops and the beginnings of my Navy and Air Force. I temporarily left him with his worst city. I was wondering how long to wait before going after Poca-Shaka, but decided to go right after him when I saw how many archeologists he so kindly built for me. I was thinking that I wanted some Archeologists to keep my culture/tourism pumping, but I didn't want to waste turns building them.

It was right about then that my bombers (upgraded from GWB) came online, and I now had two bomber stacks running round the clock missions. The arties were getting close to logistics, and my tech was still strong relative to the number of cities I had. With a small but tough navy of 5 battleships and 2 clepto-Destroyers working the North coast, I sent one set of arties/infantry/bombers on the North of the Eastern front and the other on the South of the Eastern Front. The pace picked up quite a bit, and I rolled Poca-Shaka in 5 turns, except 1 city. I left him holed up in Yerevan because The Real Shaka looked ready to put up a fight. Plus I had figured out that not prioritizing the Forbidden Palace was a big mistake on my part, and he had it. I built 8 tanks to improve my forward LOS for my bombers and to pillage, a few more naval units to protect the home land, and then went back to building wonders and winning all three international projects. After I bought the last few city states so I could ram Freedom through as the World Ideology, I spent the majority of my gold on science buildings, happiness buildings, and garrisons for my puppets. To support troop movements I built two massive East-West trans-continental rail lines, one in the North and one in the South. I also upgraded my logistics arties to RA.

The Real Shaka had a lot of troops and put up a good fight, but once I chewed through his standing army and the first few cities I started taking 2 cities a turn. Thankfully, I got the happiness in Liberty and Exploration in time never go into the red, but I had to buy happiness buildings in my older cities after some conquests. Annoyingly, you have to mouse over the info bar of a newly captured city to get the population working tiles/specialists before you can see how much happiness you'll get from said specialists. But happiness wasn't the real problem; that was reserved for the city tech penalty. When you have 15+ cities in resistance, you get the tech penalty but no tech. Future techs quickly went from 10 turns of research to 33 turns, with no change in beakers going in. The number of turns to complete Satellites stayed around 8 for a long time, and The Real Sejong beat me to Hubble because of that. I was much happier with all of those cities though, and couldn't even muster a sigh of regret. Once everything came out of resistance, I started seeing some big numbers splashed across the top of the screen.

I took 2 more Zulu cities after his cap, then took the rest of his cities except for two in a peace deal. I was feeling generous, and so I let him keep that 2 pop island city with exactly zero resources of any kind in addition to his current capital. I only lost 1 tank in the war, when I left it alone in battleship range. Unfortunately for both of us, his new cap had the Forbidden Palace. 10 turns was long enough for me to get my army to the North, take all Gaja-Sejong's cities in 3 turns (I lost 2 tanks in my haste), and get back to take Shaka's last worth while city. I left him as the sole survivor of my hostilities on his only-the-AI-would-found-here island. I went from having to buy stadiums to stay happy to having a 65 happiness cushion with one conquest.

After clipping Shaka, I brought my army back West and killed the Sejong I had temporarily revived as a buffer. Then I waxed Poca-Shaka, and sent some of my tanks towards Polish Shaka's last city. The rest of my army took its time getting over to The Real Sejong. I bombed Polish Shaka out of existence and sniped the city with a tank. All three of the single city opponents were obliterated in 1 turn each.

Now I faced a cross-roads. I was starting to really wonder how big I could grow all of these cities as I was now pushing a 100 happiness buffer after grabbing all of Freedom's happiness tenets, and I still had a lot of happiness I could buy/hope the puppet builds. When I was in my earlier happiness crush, the cities I was taking were not well developed and didn't have the buildings Freedom would buff until later in the game. Once I got into Shaka's core and the various Korean cities, I got cities with lots of buildings that were buffed by policies. I traded the survivors spare luxes for nothing to see if I could encourage them to expand and found some new cities for me, but they didn't do anything. I delayed for a bit and upgraded to stealth bombers, then decided to just finish and see what kind of high-score I can put up some other time without cheating the start. I rolled Sejong in 4 turns, mostly with my stealth bombers, battleships, and captured subs (upgraded to nuclear). I sat on the 6+ nukes I bought once I teched the bomb, and only planned to use them if Real Sejong attacked while my army was on the other side of the continent.

In conclusion, I'm not sure what I achieved, if anything, but I had fun! I crushed my existing top score (America, Deity, domination), which also featured modern era onward conquest. My final screen shots show all the numbers, and I'm certain I've never hit those kind of science and culture numbers before. I was nowhere close to 1 billion, but I did have a fairly substantial population overall. I'm definitely interested in trying a time/score game of my own some time.

As an aside, I tried using the demand option to see if I could get an AI to give me a city, and even with 3 times the AI's military score and 10 nukes collecting dust, they told me to piss off. I wonder what the threshold is?


I think the XCOM rush is just science assisted domination as opposed to an elite unit or a carpet of units domination, similar to the way people classify a domination assisted culture win as different from a science assisted culture win. It's easy because warring with a huge tech lead is easy, but getting that tech lead super early consistently is not trivial. XCOMs will have trouble with a really late game capital without 2-3 nukes to soften the target up. I'm not a fan of winning in 2 turns with 7 DOWs, 0-21 nukes (0-3 per cap, depending on strength), and 42-49 XCOMs (6-7 per city, with one to work in conjunction with a spy to sight the city after the blasts if nukes are needed; fewer XCOMs are needed if you spread it out over more turns), just because it usually involves betraying a close ally(ies) and getting that "How could you?" caption. But as a strategy it has an extremely high success rate in my experience, with a slightly lower tech requirement and a higher or lower hammer/gold requirement, depending on total capital defenses, when compared to winning a traditional science victory.
 

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I kind of feel bad when I attack a technologically inferior Civ and they cry out their 'so, you pounce on the weak' gimmick, but since that war only goes on as long as there are caps still to be taken, then meh
 
That doesn't bother me, because I put a lot of effort into getting a tech lead. I'm talking about your ideological buddy who denounced everyone you did, went to war with you, and with whom you've had a 200 turn DoF. If everyone hates me then I have no problem killing them and anyone who picks a different ideology is fair game, but if you play peaceful until the end then that's usually not the case. I'd rather put in the extra effort and launch.
 
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