The Deity Challenge Line-up #30 - Iroquois

[peddroelm]

update

Spoiler :

made it to ~T258?

-eliminated (without much issues) the Assyrians (liberated some indian cities)
-decided to go after Russia next (nr 1 in points) to secure flank, had to leave lots of tanks on Incan border to defend potential backstab (they had huge army waiting for opportunity). Moscow finally fell during T258 .. (long and messy fight with heavy (eventually replaced) losses)
- Incans are next and I might even get to battleship tech to help out with the last coastal capitals (aztec, poland, polynesia) (have tanks, lightning warfare and Clausewitz's Legacy)
- was only autocracy vs world of order and did not get tourism (bulbed great persons for culture) run into more happiness issues than I anticipated ..

Should be done ~T280, maybe earlier ..

 

[BearStew]

Eh T226 CV by an AI is quite surprising even if this one had a bonus O_O

Yeah I know! pretty crazy. I wasn't even mad though to be honest. I knew he was going to be a threat just by the stupid high culture output he had all game, but I had to chuckle when I saw the "CV imminent warning around T220". I think 46,000 culture around T200. Is that unusually high? I can't say I know much about what constitutes a high culture AI. I mean at that point, what else can you do but laugh? This is what I get for trying a CV haha

I don't think there were many wonders he missed, I might see if I still have the Autosaves to go and have a look at just how many wonders he had. I know he was putting out 600 odd tourism close to the end. So might have reached the internet? Worst part was that he managed to get +3 Culture from world wonders through because he controlled the WC. If I had managed to stop that it could have saved me I guess.

I kind of want to go back and replay this and maybe go for a dom win. Dunno, I'll see how I go for time. I really want to find out if I can use Mohawks in any meaningful way.

 

[cazaderonus]

So i'll keep telling my little stories though no screenshots.

Spoiler :

I'm roughly at turn 170/175 and just got scientific theory. And goddamn Inca have extreme high culture (450/500) and tourism (60 or so) at this point and decided to snatch PT with a GE which pissed me off to an entire new level. I mean, dude hadnt open rationalism, and next turn "Inca built PT"....

So yeah, i see only one possibility here. Crush his face. His capital seems easy enough to snatch terrain wise. My goal now is to DOW him before T200 with 6/7 artillery + 4/5 melee and 1/2 knights.

Assur, who likes me a lot, is at war with the Inca since turn 80/90 and Incas are conspiring againt their neighboor kamehameha. Which is good as i see an opening here to crush the inca while he's still (always) warring Assur and drag polynesia into it with me. Especially as i'll need to free one of its city to be safe attacking Cuzco. Might even get Aztecs in if they stop harassing Poland. So yeah i could get out of that war with better diplomatic relations than i have now.

I'm also very much considering forward settling a city so i can insta upgrade my canons and such near its border. As obviously i dont want to leave much time between getting artillery and actually attacking him.

If i pull that off (probably aiming for his 2 biggest cities), game is won for sure. I'd get so many wonders that i could pick a CV or SV and just next turn my way to it pretty much. Even a DomV would be quite easy as most capitals are coastal so battleships would make a mess. And Assur's capital is open and pretty close to me.

So yeah, praying for a smooth war

 

[peddroelm]

update

Spoiler :

T274
my win turn prevision did not take into account the (fail scouted) terrain .. 1 tile corridor by mountain flanked by closed sea filled with battleships .. Ideal anti tank spam terrain.. Had I scouted the area first I would've gotten better results - some subs brought in under the ice would've made a hell of a difference ..

Battleship fleet is finally up and pestering Montezuma for some petty cash ..


EDIT: had to reload above episode - lost too much time on the death trap and was not ready for inevitable Russian + world revenge-DOW.. On reload used double citadel to steal the deathtrap's road and brought some subs to help with the battleships .. Cusco fell much faster and was ready for Russian revenge-DOW .. Still problematic since my fleet is now tied up opposite side of the world from the 3 remaining coastal capitals and access via land seems again restricted by narrow passages ..

 

[peddroelm]

T293 domination win

went as smooth as this gif describes


This would've been a great Cartage map with all the mountain headaches ..

Felt like I've lost hundreds of tanks subs and other units .. All vids should hopefully be up by Monday ..
youtube playlist

 

[consentient]

Good win Pedrdo, hope the rustiness doesn't put you off sticking around and playing with us some more Look forward to the rest of the playlist

 

[cazaderonus]

SV TURN 309

So finally finished that game with a late scientific win. Followed the plan i had in mind and i described in my previous post : Took Cuzco at turn 225 (started war at turn 205 or so) to prevent a really fast CV from that damn Inca and then beelined for a SV. I was forced to take Liberty as an ideology as Inca had picked it up and i wanted to avoid a massive happiness loss. Had to bulb 2 scientists to speed up artillery and planting a city near its border to upgrade my units and insta attack was the real good idea here. If i had waited to upgrade stuff in my original cities, i would have needed 15/20 turns to have them in place for an attack. Considering Cuzco started air bombarding my units and pretty much insta kill them 2 turns before i took it, i'd say this decision was a game changer. So took Cuzco and made peace and then sold my lame city to polynesia to avoid it being a burden. It was really a horrible city lol.

Also took the time to liberate a polynesian city before going for Cuzco which gave an ally forever.

Overall, i knew it was a done deal when Cuzco got out of revolt and i saw my amazing buff in culture (down in spoiler is a screen of the city wonders, an amazing pack). Never got Dowed ever as i invested in nukes so it was very discouraging. Grabbed all cultural CS and was done quite fast after, just spamming next turn and abandonning deep micro management of my cities.

An intense game, very demanding but i'm glad i could pull it off. Especially glad as i never reloaded any part of that game except when i sold the wrong city to polynesia lol. Probably could have win much faster going for a Domination Victory spamming battleships but didnt want to take too much time to finish and SV goes a lot faster in actual play time.

Screenshots in spoiler

Spoiler :

Now, will go for DCL31 which i hope will be more pleasant lol. Grats to Acken for the challenging map

 

[cazaderonus]

Yeah I know! pretty crazy. I wasn't even mad though to be honest. I knew he was going to be a threat just by the stupid high culture output he had all game, but I had to chuckle when I saw the "CV imminent warning around T220". I think 46,000 culture around T200. Is that unusually high? I can't say I know much about what constitutes a high culture AI. I mean at that point, what else can you do but laugh? This is what I get for trying a CV haha

I don't think there were many wonders he missed, I might see if I still have the Autosaves to go and have a look at just how many wonders he had. I know he was putting out 600 odd tourism close to the end. So might have reached the internet? Worst part was that he managed to get +3 Culture from world wonders through because he controlled the WC. If I had managed to stop that it could have saved me I guess.

I kind of want to go back and replay this and maybe go for a dom win. Dunno, I'll see how I go for time. I really want to find out if I can use Mohawks in any meaningful way.

Well, not surprised with that result. I'm pretty sure if i had left pachawhatever do his thing he would have got a CV even earlier than that. Guy was on fire

 

[Dirk1302]

SV 264 and the first game/write up i finished on the civV forum.

Spoiler :

Rest of the game wasn't too eventful. Went for SV, got SM around turn 160, Plastics around 210. Didn't cut any forest. After SM production
was great on the mainland. The island in the west had very good spots. Finished patronage and had all city states allied at some point in the game.
Patronage is quite good with many good CS on the map. Got a merchant of Venice, bought Valetta with it. Great site but got it a bit late in the game.

SV trick 264 loosely based on Acken's SV freedom guide. Money wasn't the bottleneck though. I haven't done this enough to really get the hang of it.
I think i made at least 2 mistakes:

I self built Apollo while i had 2 GE, should have burned one as i now burned it very late on a space factory. Other one was burned on the Scope, that should be correct.
Could then have bulbed the tech that does space boosters and finish building parts 6 turns earlier.

However i was just done with the parts when i bulbed the last tech and bought the last part. So apparently i was a GS short.
I used one on SM but since SM also boosted production and i could get schools fast with good production/money i don't think that was a mistake.
I could probably have timed GS better in several cities privileging cities that only would spawn one GS. In fact i didn't do any timing at all,
just waited for what popped up. Also i should have proposed and backed scientific funding. If i could get 2 more GS this way i think with buying more
parts i could maybe finish ~10 turns earlier.

I finished rationalism very late and the few RA's i had came in too late. Without many RA finishing patronage looked better or at least more fun.
I probably should have made some RA's without the 50% finisher but not sure if this would have amounted too much.

At least i have an idea now how to do it, next SV game i will micro the proccess more. Right now i'm starting at the beginning of the series,
Zulu's,doesn't seem to be a SV game at all.

 

[stormtrooper412]

What's SM, I plain forgot

Also, I didn't know you can use GE on Apollo?

 

[cazaderonus]

What's SM, I plain forgot

Also, I didn't know you can use GE on Apollo?

I think it's a kinky ST Dont see what else it can be tbh

Nice win Dirk !

 

[Dirk1302]

I think it's a kinky ST Dont see what else it can be tbh

Nice win Dirk !

Indeed. Civ4 community almost everything was abbreviated iirc, less here.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Figures. Certain things got renamed slightly so I didn't catch it right off the bat

 

[tarafran]

LOooooNG game

 

[stormtrooper412]

why not make the big push east and finish there. Looks like a cop out win

 

[cazaderonus]

LOooooNG game

Whoah that's a massive gray spot

 

[Sclb]

T312 Diplo V

Originally wanted to go for late game domination, but aborted as I saw diplo would be much faster and that one of the AI may launch before I can destroy him. At the end, I have every tech in the game except for 2.

SP: full tradition, 3 rationalism, full Honor, 3 commerce, 6 order
wonders built: Kremlin, Neuschwanstein, Hubble, Great Firewall
WC: WF(won), IG(won), world ideology order, +culture to NW

Spoiler :

3 city NC on the starting continent, then 3 more cities on the western island for 6 tradition cities. One of them on the faith mountain. Used food cargo on every city to help with food since I wanted to avoid chopping forests for longhouse boosts. Start was slow, only managed to steal one worker from CS.
Ash eliminated Gandhi early, likewise Casimir eliminated Monty. I stayed friends with Cathy, Pachacuti and the 3 of us all went order (mainly due to the huge Incan tourism) Ash and Casimir both took Autocracy and it wasn't long until Assyria invaded Russia and Inca invaded Poland. I was surprised I was able to keep both of them off me since both were hostile to me after I passed world ideology order. That was good since both Pachacuti and Cathy was ahead of my tech since poland passed science funding. Eventually Cathy only got 1 city left on an island and she'll never launch. Incans were slowed down by the war and I was able to build Great Firewall to prevent any possible CV attempts by them. At this point, all the remaining AI reached atomic era.
Once I have Stealth Bombers and Modern armor techs, I invaded Assyria, war was slow at the start since I was short on aluminum until my navy that consisted of missile cruisers took one of the costal russian city from him, along with Moscow. I also have to keep him from killing Kyzyl. After taking Assur, war picked up the pace and I quickly captured all of his remaining core cities and liberated M'banza Kongo. He also used the atomic bomb on Assur but luckily there was a bomb shelter in the city and he didn't kill any of my units as I was careful on their placements.
Later upgraded modern armors to Giant Death robots and eliminated Assyria completely, in the process capturing Delhi and liberating one of the other Indian cities. At this point I have enough votes to win the WL vote in 10 turns and I was pretty sure it was much faster than trying to get the remaining capitals controlled by Inca and Poland. Poland and Honolulu was too far away for stealth bombers and I have to get my navy there. Cusco didn't look like it was easily accessible by my tanks due to a narrow choke point.
Just to be safe, Dow on Poland and liberated one the Polynesian island city in case India gets wiped out again, which did happen eventually, this time by Incas.

 

[Blatc]

T273 Science Victory

I tried this map a bunch of times and am happy to be done with it.

A few notes:
T36 Temple of Artemis. I strung together a bunch of WLTKD for all 4 cities mid-game and population really took off
T95 4-city National College
T126 Education
T136 Sistine Chapel (GE from ToA). I wanted a Culture victory, and even opened Aesthetics, but realized soon after that I had absolutely no chance. The AI with the start bonus went full Tradition, full Rationalism, 10 in Freedom (I followed into Freedom), full Aesthetics, and a few in Commerce, produced over 60k culture, built 28 wonders, including Porcelain Tower (I was 2 turns away) and Statue of Liberty (I didn't even have the tech yet!)
T210 Plastics with 1 GS bulb; 4/4 Labs up on T233

I have a bad habit of not building Hermitage until very late in the game, usually due to a weaker city not getting Opera House, and did it again this game. So, despite winning Worlds Fair, I only got 19 social policies. Fortunately, my late-game timing was very good for once and things came together nicely.

I faith-bought 1 GE (Hubble) and 1 GS. I built 4 spaceship parts, 2 each in my 2 best cities at about 9 turns each, and purchased the final 2 on T272 when I got Space Procurements using a Great Writer.

Spoiler :

 

[stormtrooper412]

Quite impressive to have turned a late Education into a not-so-late SV. Usually it takes me at least 50 turns from RLabs to win alone, and that's with an early Plastics bulb. There's probably something about the late game that I'm doing wrong, perhaps not get the great people modifiers quickly enough to push that one last GS in

 

[Blatc]

Quite impressive to have turned a late Education into a not-so-late SV. Usually it takes me at least 50 turns from RLabs to win alone, and that's with an early Plastics bulb. There's probably something about the late game that I'm doing wrong, perhaps not get the great people modifiers quickly enough to push that one last GS in

I think it's mainly a reflection of being low-population at T100 and then big growth after that - Temple of Artemis and ~5 straight WLTKD in all 4 cities was significant, as was the cost. I likely had 3/4 Rlabs up ~50 turns before victory.
I believe I went Metal Casting before Education and Fertilizer before Plastics.