The Deity Challenge Line-up #32 - England

Upgrading from Longbows, it makes sense to beeline Gatling Guns as the +1 range LB removes the main weakness of Gatlings.
 
I don't know about that. Gats w/ +1 range can still be one-shot-killed when approaching a city.

Sure, that would eventually happen. In this game, for the land battles on both continents, I was moving Longbows within 2 tiles of the cities so that I could fire more shots per turn, pillaging and/or cycling them out when hurt; none of them got one-shot-killed (I mainly lost units on tiles where some ships were within range, as well as city) and I don't think any full health Gatlings were one-shot-killed, though I did put some on marshes at the end (see pic in my write-up).
 
In my conquest that went a bit clumsily once I sailed overseas, I don't think I lost a single LB until the final siege, but at that point I only valued my arty
 
So after some tries I finally managed to get my first DLC done. According to the spreadsheet it's somewhat late, but at least it worked out.....

I went liberty as I wanted to try out a somewhat larger Empire and built 6 cities (as seen on the final screenshot). Also I thought of trying a DomV but then decided to go for the, according to this forum, easiest VC: Science.
I still have problems with happiness and city growth....

I captured 3 settlers from UR, managed to build the pyramids (as only one civ had one point in liberty) and then just turtled and stayed out of any trouble.

I think maybe it would have been better to go tradition for SV.....

I will now try to get the CV on the Egypt DCL or DomV on the China DCL (Where I have some help from this forum and videos from Acken). If you know some vids or tipps/tricks I should definitively watch or read, please let me know ;)

By the way: I really enjoy this DCL idea as it is a perfect opportunity to augment my Civ5 skills and one can find many good tipps and tricks, AND the maps (which I tried with less success until now) where all really interesting. Thx for your work ;)
 
Domination T244. Second playthrough -during first playthrough never used Longbows, Dom T265. Decided to come back and see how good longbows actually are.

Spoiler :

3 city Lib - couldnt see enough luxuries for 4 cities and was going to conquer my continent anyway. NC around T75 and Machinary T95 - 10 longbows and some horsemen take venice (T104), Mecca (T116), Palenque (T122). Im not sure if the AIs were particulary bad this game but Longbows made the war so easy. Was going to leave venice alive for XP farming, but messed up and my CS ally killed him.

Teched workshops-education-astronomy, found other continent in which genghis was busy fighting a 3v1 war. Hardest part was getting out of the infra buildup mode, used SOTL to join in the war versus genghis (karakorum T194) and liberated 1 CS. sailed SOTL all the way around to Beijing (T214), then back again to up take moscow (t230) with artillery support. Bomber support and ranged battleships was the plan to take Persepolis but I forgot that melee units are needed. Quite a few turns were wasted rush buying paratroopers (which promptly died upon landing next to persepolis) before a calvary ended it on T244.

Social policies: Full Lib, Full Rat, exp (+3 hammers), Comm opener, Autocracy 8. Won the WF + captured sistine + 3 writers means i had too many policies.

Wonders: None built. Venice: GLH, pyramids. Mecca: Stonehenge, Petra, Alhmabra, Oracle. Palenque: Great Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Boro, Parthenon.

Rel: never bothered. Venice, Arabia, Maya all had religions with happy faith buildings and JE. Infra buildup is always easier with captured holy cities and faith wonders.

WC: WF (won), +3 to wonders.

Some thoughts: I captured 4 great works in the initial sweep and had cathedrals in many cities - is there any method to transit to culture victory after sweeping a continent? Normally I can do a Science victory transition to cut down on real life time, but was thinking that culture victory transition would be even faster since all you need is internet + IG (which you will definately win if you sweep your continent).
 

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Why did it take you so long to invade the other continent? In my sweep I just continued where I left off after I secured my continent and pounded them all
Spoiler :

except Russia

fairly quickly
 
Its hard to get out of the building zone once you get all the faith wonders and cities with wonderful dirt.

Told myself "just universities and then navigation", then its "hmmm these cities can really grow with cargo ships and pagodas", then its "guilds would be useful" and "i think these SOTLs need armouries before i build them". Next thing you know its past t150 and all the iron has been sold to china/persia....
 
Well I kind of did the same while Longbows were wrecking everything on the other end
 
Told myself "just universities and then navigation", then its "hmmm these cities can really grow with cargo ships and pagodas", then its "guilds would be useful" and "i think these SOTLs need armouries before i build them". Next thing you know its past t150 and all the iron has been sold to china/persia....

I fall into that trap just about every game! I am never ready to warmonger when there is one more National Wonder just a dozen turns out...
 
Finished this one as well, T173 Dom without any major surprises.

Spoiler :

Settled on site, stole few workers from Harun and one of those got a map ruin which revealed Skilldorado so I bought a settler before the free Liberty one. I also screwed my building queue and was building settlers while happy & other stuff while unhappy.
Very late pantheon from a ruin and Earth Mother gave me nice fpt but Harun had an awesome religion and while I was waiting my T73 prophet Pacal got 2nd religion from HS and took the last happiness building so I planted my mine in hope of getting Unis with faith & later Pagodas - didn't go quite like that.
The mess up also meant that I built T70 Oracle and 5C NC after that T81. Liberty was finished T72 and GS planted. T92 SoZ in expo. Friends with everyone but still happiness trouble as I only maritime CSs and the detour towards Construction was too late. Main reason for this was that I wasn't planning to war at all before SotLs and I couldn't afford to upgrade archer line anyway.

T94 Education and for a change cities were big enough to build them in reasonable time. T108 Machinery & T114 DoW Enrico. T116 Astronomy and T118 took Venice and met Darius. T123 finally my first city adopted religion but no further missionaries came.
T125 Navigation & 4 SotL which were quite handy - too bad none of the /¤###/!& settled on the coast so the plans of finishing this quickly were soon over.

Paid Harun to Dow Pacal but that war was lazy one so I joined after Venice ran out of xp pinjatas. Not much of a opposition here either but Palenque had to wait until T143 as I had a spy there.

China had half a dozen CS allies and Beijing was coastal so Nelson with 4 ships sailed across the sea the plan being kill CS units to get logistics while waiting a melee ship to arrive & cap. Had there been more Chinese navy I'd be in trouble surrounded by hostile CSs but few extra mps are nice.
I also DoWed Harun to start a longish siege as my units started on the wrong side of Mecca. Obviously Harun made peace with Pacal and even game his 2nd city which was a bit of a surprise. Mecca T162 was taken twice to kill some excessive pop to manage unhappiness - crappy city anyway. Pacal at least had all the religious wonders and I managed to kidnap one of his prophets so I converted 4 cities and got 8 happiness from Pagodas.
Beijing was mine few turns later and I even took a low pop hop city to be safe but that wasn't needed. 2 logistics & range ship sailed to Persia and one with only logistics followed soon as there was one tile which Persepolis could be attacked from the sea. A land war would've been much too exhaustive especially when he had the local CSs as allies.
Cathy surely had it coming when I DoWed and as Moscow was a bit tricky to catch from the sea most of my land troops were nearby with 3 GG bombs the Siberia wasn't even hard.
Genghis was a joke by now so Karakorum didn't need much from ships that were practising on Ragusa for a while.

To avoid any surprises I took Moscow, Karakorum & Persepolis on T173.

Full Liberty, full Honor & last was dumped on Commerce. If the game had been much longer I'd have bought Factories for Ideology but that wasn't needed.
Once I give up religion voluntarily no one bothers to harass me with their endless televangelists which was one of the main reasons for happiness issues. Also Venice took Kiev & Kabul out before I met them so culture was low - one lucky camp clear with a scout near Malacca was very helpful half the game.

I was thinking of getting a GAd from Liberty as it was decently soon but I didn't expect this tricky map for navy. Had I known by ~T80 that most capitals are inland I'd have demolished the shipyards and start building Longbows and start war on the 2nd continent 50 turns earlier.


Spoiler :



Not much units and total lack of contemporary units like Pikes & Knights - those I ran into few moments later near Kabul.




Uncommonly large number of 3-range tiles where to shoot so no probs here either.




Few units took a swim to get to the right side of Mecca to shoot but other than that no probs. His CAs used my horses and Pacal probably killed few, too.





Beijing took a while but I was quite happy just to kill units as I badly needed the xp. Xian was taken as a hop city to buy units and I was prepared to take & raze St. Petersburg and plant a new city on isthmus just to provide sea access to Moscow but Russian troops were originally more keen on taking Nanjing than defending hence that was not needed.




Sometimes one tile is enough and his land troops are somewhere else killing foreigners which I may have slightly suggested earlier.




Looked worse than it actually was. 3 3rd range tiles were quite enough to take the city as there weren't too many units stealing attention.




Icing on the cake. One turn to kill nearby navy & another to take the city.




Unusually large cities for me hence the happiness issues and I could've used few more hammer tiles. Still well above average start which was further helped by vicinity of Venice.




No surprises here. The one in Commerce was cosmetic. Had I gone with own religion I'd probably have opened Piety and gone for total dom incl. religion but the rare chance of a shortish game was partly too tempting.




Darius was first to open Industrial but I had more techs. Fairly even teching by everyone but Genghis who was already badly beaten when we met.
 
To avoid any surprises I took Moscow, Karakorum & Persepolis on T173.

What potential surprises would you be you referring to? Them trying to retake their capital after you make peace with them to focus on the next victim?
 
Main reason in this case was to avoid possible unhappiness spikes so I hammered Moscow slowly down while getting into position for Persepolis to take it as quickly as possible with only 2 or 3 units. Had the Persians come back to defend their city I had no means to take those out within 10 or so turns. Karakorum had nothing interesting so there was no point to get involved before the end and Genghis paid full price for my stuff.
Also AI has a nasty habit of spawning a bunch of units out of the dark after losing a city so taking the last 3 capitals on same turn was the safest way to end the game. On top that come the real surprises which are, by default, unknown in advance.
 
Taking out Moscow proved to be the most difficult part in my game mainly because I delayed Dynamite unintentionally and also they were untouched for the most part of the game. Also not coastal so ships couldn't get in. The rest of my timings were pretty much samey
 
Also AI has a nasty habit of spawning a bunch of units out of the dark after losing a city...

Or after a DOW even. One thing the AI does reasonably well is use airports for airlifts. I keep forgetting that. Late game, if I kick off a DOW on some remote city with arty (or Rocket Launcher) and neglect to move a unit next to the city, the city “spawns” a bunch of units. So the remote city I though I would take in two turns now takes several...

The AI will spend gold on units, but they are capped by the one unit-per city buy just like a player. I suspect that the AI doesn't know to move a garrisoned unit out of city to enable buying either. But the airlift trick with lots of units already available? The AI does that fine!
 
T236 DomV
Spoiler :
Figured I'd go back and play this one since I hadn't played England in a while and I wanted some easy fun. 4-city NC, full Honor, then straight to Machinery on T99. Started first war as soon as I got my cargo ship back from Venice. Venice fell T111, Harun took out Palenque. I decided clearing the whole continent would be an ordeal so I leisurely took Mecca and Palenque while building ships to go after the other continent. I didn't know there were 2 inland capitals but fortunately, they were easy. I brought Genghis back to life for about 50 turns and decided to leave Beijing for last because it was coastal and China was friendly. I actually had to switch ideologies at the very end because China was propping up my happiness for half the game and the DoW brought me to -20 happiness even with full Commerce.

Capital order: Venice T111, Mecca T144, Palenque T175, Persepolis T201, Moscow T219, Karakorum T232, Beijing T236

Policies: Full Honor, Full Commerce, Autocracy 3 (switched to Freedom)
 

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t300 Total DomV: bow down before the Queen!

This was an obscenely long game. First time I started with artillery and ships of the line, but that put me behind, and I wallowed in unhappiness forever because I tried Exploration. Second time around I went Commerce -- which seems to be mandatory when going wide domination -- and was able to stay in positive happiness for a long time. At the end of the game, I was mostly unhappy, until I decided to go right side Liberty, which gave 43 happiness on t300. The second time I started war with flight and mostly built planes, tanks, and used nuclear weapons before the first drop in city-state opinion.
 

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