The Deity Challenge Line-up #26 - Celts

[tombakerwho]

Settled in-place. Victory condition was undecided at the beginning of the game, things were going okay, went Liberty, Education on Turn 107.

Spoiler :

Then, one of the AI's annoyed my to aggression. Persia decided to endless wonder spam, stole my hard-earned CS allies, and then he took my last city settle location. When I scouted his capital, there was not much in the way of defenses, which was a bit surprising, as Darius usually spams units. Decided to go with either a Galleass or Frigate rush, that turned into a Frigate rush as I started building the Galleass units a little to late.

Swung my frigates around to the eastern side of the Persia's peninsula, and Persepolis fell on turn 151:



This obviously irritated Hiawatha, as he sent an enormous army of Mohawk warriors, which was ground up pretty quick. If he had simply conquered along the way, instead of going directly for my capital, he might have made progress. At one point, the remnants of his shattered army tried to retreat, but I covered all escape routes .

Rome was the obvious runaway, and the world was decidedly against him, plus Rome was coastal, so Caesar was the obvious next target. Frigates took down Rome's defenses pretty quick, but there were just SO MANY units! I really just wanted a nuke. Every turn, there was yet another screen full, and they started getting more advanced as the assault went on, which had me a bit concerned. Despite the enormous losses, he was also still gaining ground against the other AIs during this assault, as he took America's capital. This went on seemingly forever, until finally he accepted a white peace. At this point, I saved up some money, and upgraded to Battleships before continuing.

Round 2, Rome finally broke against Battleships, the unit loss was so high every turn that he simply could not spam fast enough. I took Washington, and several other cities before accepting peace. Of course, Darius came back from the dead, and mounted a foolish attempt on Cardiff.

Everyone was happy when I took Rome, but denounced me when I captured America's capital from Rome. The next biggest threat was India, so the Battleships headed toward Delhi. I destroyed about half his fleet before he acquired Battleships himself, then came his planes, and then suddenly the turns were very slow and careful. Darius, the irritant, had thrown off the perfect timing for a Battleship assault, but eventually India was ground down.



The rest of the AI fell rapidly to the combination of stealth bombers, rocket artillery, X-Coms and Modern Armor (no death robots).





Decided to give order a shot on this:



Iron curtain is decent, but felt a little underpowered for a Tier III policy.

 

[consentient]

Nice win, Tom. But you didn't say WHY you decided to give order a shot...

 

[BearStew]

Well ended up going for diplo in the end. Didn't get it because of 2 Dows 4 turns before the vote. The bastards nuked my allied city states!

Spoiler :

I ended up BFFs with America, which really was potentially a poor choice, they conquered their continent, wiping out Greece, Ethiopia and Rome. Everything was fine up until around 15 turns out from the vote, India and The Iriquois went Order and Denounced me almost simultaneously. Up until that point I had DoFs with both of them, America and Persia. Crucially they wouldnt renew our DoFs when I needed them on T255, as the first world leader vote was going to be on T262. They wiped out 4 of my allied city states, and seeing as I had pretty much just cruised through this game and ignored military all together (apart from my super trained machine guns) there wasn't a hell of a lot I could do.

Had an interesting point where Byblos conquered my Hanoi training camp unexpectedly with a caravel Not really a good game, but to be honest I lose interest in peaceful games some times. This was one of those occasions.

Would have probably snuck in a diplo win using the combo of Charitable missions and Philanthropy is very strong. I was missing 6 out of the CSs as allies just before the vote, but bought them all out. As one final bugger off to India and Hiawatha I used my remaining votes to get Washington acroiss the line as World Leader

T262 DV Loss

 

[stormtrooper412]

Small commerce strategy
But last time I checked that many cities can't possible be called "small" so I guess "wide commerce" would be more appropriate...

Really if you are going for diplo, the +gold from temple is rather useless as late game since sea routes are all you need. You can do the same strategy with tradition or liberty just as well as long as you have faith generation/the AI neighbors are not missionary spamming.

But even without the religion diplo boost, the strat works simply because of how diplo wins work; just have enough money and find enough suckers to vote for you. Usually that just means having some really good friends (you can incorporate building landmarks for AI into this strat too)

Commerce was worth bugger all in my game though. I mostly used cargo ships for megabucks, popped a grand total of 0 great merchants and the happiness boost got me from 45 to 75 or something like that, but I absolutely wanted nothing from Rationalism to prove to myself that I can making others do science for you is fun Patronage is a strong tree to have around

Also, I gave every last penny to get (completely needless) RLabs everywhere so I could finish Globalization just before the vote, because I didn't want to win with only 46 votes

 

[BearStew]

I don't remember if Orthodoxy was available at the time of me founding, I missed a golden opportunity to play a game as Orthodox Celts

Haha I know I had absolutely zero chance of that. A certain distant neighbor had that religion stitched up by T32 in my game.

 

[stormtrooper412]

I founded Catholic but some of my cities turned Protestant, which was historically accurate I suppose

 

[consentient]

Orthodox Celts are a Serbian music group. But I had to Google it.

 

[rkade8583]

I've only beaten a prince game once but I do enjoy me some Celts. This should be painful... and interesting.

 

[tombakerwho]

@Consentient

I just wanted to play with the late game units and try out Iron Curtain. So, the idea was use the science boosts to get there quicker. Never did get a death robot, but it has been awhile since I played with modern armor. I forgot how silly stealth bombers were, the range is ridiculous. Modern armor was getting killed though, mainly by mass artillery formations, which was unexpected, given that they are highly mobile. If they were being killed by helicopters it would have made more sense, but none of them had helicopters yet.

As for Iron Curtain, the internal trade route boost was better than expected, but the free courthouse on capture was strange. I could start controlling the captured cities, so re-assigning specialists and build order, but the cities were still in resistance. I think Iron Curtain could be used to gain the tech lead, but I already had it, so not too useful. The best part about order seemed to be happiness, as it seemed like less of a happiness struggle than Autocracy. But, the unique Celt building helped boost happiness, so that may be just a Celt advantage.

 

[Babinski]

4 city Freedom Science run, far from optimal. Had a chance of getting religion/spawn prophet a couple of turns but missed out on all of em. Wonderspammer Darius took Leaning Tower of Pisae and Big Ben.
Darius wared me and I only hade Gandhi as friend mid-late game so not much from research agreements .

4 good city locations tho, 3 of em coastals. Good suply of luxuries and Money through the game.

If I sort it out I post a finish picture. Have it saved as a print screen. (not good at this )

 

[BearStew]

T268 Diplo Win (Don't quite understand the difference in the Turn times for the world leader vote, I must have bulbed into the later eras on different turns?)

Played from before Ideology again (about T180), still was definitely not a perfect run but was at least much better. went Freedom and paid more attention to diplomacy instead of just next turning until the vote. My empire was much more capable under freedom than Autocracy despite the slight ideological pressure (I think about -10 happy ). I even managed to nab the Statue of Liberty with the Liberty closer great person. Seems kind of fitting I think. The extra food and happiness from the specialists I was running was brilliant. Douglas turned into an absolute beast of a city as it had all of my guilds and was running a high number of specialists.

Charitable missions and Philanthropy are silly together, most city states were at 110 influence from each 1k payment. The 10k I borrowed in the last couple of turns was surplus to requirements in the end.

Spoiler :

The US ate I think 2 or 3 city states on their continent and I never met Bucharest. On the turn of the vote the US poached 2 city states off me, but luckily I had paid The Iroquois, Perisa and India to vote for me, so I think I topped out at 41 votes with 38 required. Everyone loved me this time despite completely bucking public opinin with my ideology. Shows what kind of difference paying more attention to the World Congress can do. In all honesty this could have turned into a science win anyway with the rate the final tech push was going. I dont think I even used Oxford.

Social Polcies (Piety was mostly wasted because I couldn't be bothered trying to keep up with the Persian Missonary Spam. Would have loved to have converted the US and Iriquois who didnt found there own for the diplo boost)

Spoiler :

General Empire view

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Vote Outcome

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Final tech tree (everything not on the globalization beeline was bulbed with leftover faith bought GS and 2 late RAs)

Spoiler :

 

[stormtrooper412]

The way I understand how diplo win works, half of the civs need to be in Atomic or at least one in Info. I think. Once that happens, the UN are formed and the vote for world leader will take place half the time away from the next congress vote. It was kind of unlucky of me to have reached Atomic just a couple turns after the previous vote, which started the counter of 20 turns for the next congress vote, and 30 for the UN. I don't remember now, but I suppose if I bulbed sooner, I would have gotten to Atomic in time not to start another round, and win around 290. My game was really slow though, and even though two people had Apollo online by the time it was done, I think only a total of one SS part was build and as you can see, I was only one tech behind and I deliberately teched slow (no Rationalism) to see how much I could get away with

 

[BearStew]

Yeah the more I'm playing lately the more I'm finding Tommynt's comments along the lines of "do whatever and still win against the ai" more and more true. As long as I'm not just mindlessly clicking next turn waiting for a vote, I'm finding you don't really need to follow any particular game plan to still win. Rationalism definitely speeds things up but it's by no means as necessary as everyone seemed to think at one stage.

I think I reached the info age slightly quicker in the first game so that would explain it I guess.

 

[Grendeldef]

T279 Dom.

Nothing dramatic here but interesting in the sense that at first the AI's liberal interpretation of game rules and hence my inability to pillage a single road tile delayed capturing a capital for 10 turns & a bit later an annoying bug were a captured city doesn't use the settled tile royally screwed my end game. Those unware of the bug might wanna take a look at Maddjinn's Spain game were the early captured Roman city did the. Surely there're other examples somewhere but that's the first I can remember.
Unlike usually I didn't keep track of ingame events so times might be +/-2 off on some occasions.

Spoiler :

Not much own rules apart from not using siege weapons. I originally also thought I'd stick in-line with the previous Pangaea DCL so no boats but after AC sailed to pay a visit I bought a trireme for exploration. Somewhere around T150 I also got a Galleass to protect my TRs. Frigates were available T233 much for the same reason and only I they helped capturing was Delhi and Rome was captured by an Ironclad. Another theme was using same units the AI had which worked fine until nukes and I let both Gandhi & AC to take a close look at them before they had tech - didn't notice anyone else building Manhattan.

After 5C NC T79 I settled 2 more cities just because I could and the plain swimming to Indian desert area took ages due Hiawatha's swimming schoolers occupying most of the coastal tiles. T108 AC went Renaissance, T112 Education but I had no money to buy anything & the desert cities were really lacking hammers. Hiawatha got pissed at for quite a while and nobody wanted horses so just slowly building stuff while waiting inevitable Persian attack as my spy informed. After getting Machinery ~T125 upgraded few CBs & saved Darius from having to DoW. Only few units but not much room to manoeuvre either so it took a while to get Persepolis T160.
Managed to found WC T142 but missed LToP by two turns. Meanwhile AC almost wiped Washington off and as I didn't want naval units I bought OB from Washy & AC and started slow march to Ethiopia.

Attacking a capital on another continent T170+ with XBows, Musketmen & Knights seemed like an interesting idea. Extremely slow & painful grind as the city lost 15-20 hit points per turn and not at all if I had to move any of the logistics & range units. 2 Kinights creating mess and 3 Musketmen as sacrificial lambs if needed and one stolen worker acting as an ineffective lure and a scout supervising things. Until Haile started buying units in the occupied city things went relatively smoothly but only after sacrificing 2 Musketmen & a knight I managed to pillage an unfotunate road tile so my XBows were safe I manged to take the city. Getting addiotional enforcements took quite some time. In a peace deal I also kept Adwa to have a stepping stone for Athens for some reason it wasn't willing to work the tile it was settled on which caused a world of problems & a semi-disaster while I was preparing for a buld train.

Rome was decently friendly, not enough for DoF but willing to attack everyone else but me in nice rotation. AC went industrial T167 at which point he was only a tech ahead of me; 6 turns later he was 5 techs ahead which was interesting. Generally keeping several wars going on slowed tech pace nicely. T175 Industrial for me but only way I could get coal was GG bombing Kyzyl, used my money on 2 factories & build one so I got Order T183 few turns after Roman Autocracy and a nice happiness buffer. T189 filled Honor and sticking with only 2 policy trees all the rest was put in Order.
T205 AC went Modern with Flight while the peloton was way behind but the worst part was Hiawatha taking an interest on my CSs.
WF win T212 was a nice boost for culture etc though I had a 700 hammer overkill with it; apparently AC wasn't interested.

Hiawatha & Alex DoWed on T228 while most of my troops were still hugging AA blocked by Haile so I GG bombed a path to Greece and finally got some money from Honor. Hiawatha didn't have much units at all so managed to take Onondaga T251 with one Machine Gun & half a dozen Infantry but I had to make tech detour for Navigation T233 to get some protection for TRs as I lost one a turn. GWBs arrived for killing few cities for CSs to take until Hiawatha gave all of his leftover cities for razing and for a change it was nice to be on positive happiness the whole time. Would've been even nicer if hadn't not forget to build a scout to camp in every city.

Athens T264 was much harder to catch as Alex didn't have flight I didn't use GWBs and I had to take out 2 additional cities to get even a shot at Athens which was behind GW and Haile DoWed him, too so the movement was limited.
Adwa had serious trouble with the unworkable tile so I had to use the sea tiles but under a constant naval block the city didn't grow and barely managed to build anything. Not too bad in itself but it was my only mountain city for long and building Neuschwanstein for 40 turns made me drop double digit negative happiness when ideological pressure finally kicked in. It also meant that I didn't build Oxford in the game and 7 out 9 bulbs weren't what they should've been so I didn't get SBs either - not that those were needed but I had to re-invent the game plan.

T265 DoWed Gandhi and due to happiness issues Nukes were a nice solution and he was also in war with AC and killed quite a few units by trying to take Cahokia instead of my cities. Took Delhi T270 and settled for peace. Exceptionally uneventful war.

Roman troops were already on my border so I DoWed him right away. Few nukes on the sea and finishing touches with bombers killed a large portion of his troops and attacking from AA made diversion enough that Rome was totally unprotected as was Washington which was unreachable for my bombers so I kept Lhasa instead of liberating it. Rome T278 & Washington T279.

Long game & few maritime CSs so the cities are decently sized for Liberty.

Full Liberty, then full Honor apart from the Ideology early perks & the rest in Order which was one policy short of completion.

Decent faith output but nowhere enough to compete with others so apart from few Mosques & GGs it was ignored. In the end I still had ~8 GG but they spawned on wrong locations.

Managed to build all nationals but Oxford and Brandenburg, Kremlin, Hubble with a GE and finally Neuschwanstein a turn before the end. For a change early capitals had some useful stuff and Ceilidh Hall was highly useful - I haven't been this keen on build cultural buildings in ages.

My science was awful but others had it even worse. Rome dipped into Rati enough to get PT but lost the edge soon afterwards. Happiness wasn't an issue in most of the game but I could've used used a lot more money but I also did several lux for lux deals before going war.
I had fun in the early stages just expanding & building while getting to get DoWed but Darius' starting point was so crap that he was easy to take out while Hiawatha was heavily into contraceptives pre T100 and didn't expand at all like he usually does.
Had I know/bothered to check that the other continent was reachable early on the T50-Education would've been a bit different but by the time I met them Washy was half dead.

As usual almost everything was done in some handicapped manner but using Rationalism in this game would've made it ridiculously easy as happiness wasn't an issue unlike in the previous games.

 

[Nikola K]

Pics or it didn't happen ^^

Spoiler :

Some info about the empire

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and demographics

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[stormtrooper412]

I must be thick but eerm, science win, right?

 

[Nikola K]

Yep,Alpha Centauri was built(bought actually )

 

[stormtrooper412]

it doesn't actually *say* anywhere but I figured since you didn't ally nearly enough as many CSs for a diplo win and you somehow finished with 0 tourism actually ... o_O

 

[Nikola K]

Yeah something weird happens,sometimes my screenshot when pasted in paint doesn't show the info for which i hover on top in game,just like in first pic here,dunno ...some strange graphic bug or whatnot,it makes me sad,since i was not able to extract the picture for the china dcl with the EUi info about my empire(got 35 wonders(new personal best!) when i won,ai-s or what was left of them actually had none )

 

[sun8119]

T265 SV

Spoiler :

4 city Tradition, Rationalism + Freedom. All space parts were bought. Not a single war except 2 worker steals from the Iroquois. Easily won WF and IG. Could have played CV since leader India had only 35K at the end. India and America were my friends but the rest were divided in 3 or so fronts with wars taking place.
In the end I had too many GSs, 2 were faith bought.