The Deity Challenge Line-up #32 - England

[Olodune]

t150

Spoiler :

I went with the Tradition game since that was the one I had played most recently and I still knew the gameplan there.

Some unfortunate events (well small hurdles to a fairly straightforward game)

- Venice MoV'ed Kiev at a very poor time and completely messed up the Renaissance timing. This means Rationalism policies are slower than they could be.

- China had a very solid opening and beat me to the Globe (124) and Pisa (131). Pisa was just out of my reach, so now both Culture and Space will be slower than I'd like.

- Happiness was still tighter than I'd like; Venice is a pariah.

The state of the game is very good, but not as good as is possible with this map. Space or late Dom as the VC.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Where do you find happiness on this map, it was impossible for me to stay in the green, so I gave up, I'll have to reevaluate

 

[budweiser]

Domination t301

Spoiler :

Mis-clicked on Liberate after I said, Wait, one more turn. Doh!

stormtrooper412 - My empire was so unhappy, I lost two cities to flips including a captured enemy cap. I'm glad this one is over.

 

[consentient]

Welcome TsiNaPah

 

[peddroelm]

@olodune you should do a guide on scouting .. You have >85% map scouted by turn 150 .. Assuming you went astronomy first (observatories / caravels) but still jaw dropping for a player like me that always struggles with scouting and gets appropriately punished for it..

@stormtrooper412 -> scouting is key to happiness
- meet every AI for cheaper tech and ability to buy luxuries in emergency
- get all the wonder happy bonus on map
- most importantly meet all CS for meet gold and access to chain quests .. (buy one to connect a resource another one wants ) ..Dump money to befriend mercantile in emergency .. Try to have all culture CS at least friends past industrial .. Buy embassy, connect horse/iron ..etc are some easy quests that can give valuable influence ... Even military states can help - the gifted units can help barb hunt (more quests) and intimidate aggressive neighbors ..
-ruins

It also helps prevents future face palm moments in domination games ..

 

[Olodune]

@olodune you should do a guide on scouting .. You have >85% map scouted by turn 150 ..

I like to see the map, I guess.

Spoiler :

As you guessed, Astronomy was the Renaissance entry point. I don't remember the exact turn but it was definitely in the 11Xs. At that point I had two Triremes waiting for upgrades and two Scouts sitting on the Ocean shelf. One scout had double vision. Scouting is really good obviously: trades, tech discounts, CS meetings, and free NW happiness.

I'll buy OB when scouts reach foreign lands. Mostly I just want to see what's going on in the world.

@stormtrooper

Spoiler :

Happiness is, surprisingly, a bit of a problem. Two main sources: 1) swapping those excess luxes; 2) there is a happiness CS in the north. It needs to be allied in both my Liberty AND the Tradition game to support the 6th city. My GPT went to CSs instead of rush buys

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Olodune just need to record an LP.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Alright, third restart and this time it's looking good:

5 city tradition this time, 4 + 1 after NC, obviously the one on the west, newly founded and fairly crap

Nothing eventful, used all trading money for city states, thanks for the tips. I ALWAYS seem to undervalue scouting :/

also, the second screenie shows an unusual event that I've never seen happening. Cute

Regarding the spreadsheet, if ANYONE has ANY issues with it and/or has found errors, please let me know. I feel like I'm doing doing too well, or too lousy for anyone to bother with it

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Why didn't you improve 2 wheats near London? That's 4 extra food.

And yeah, the AI's are getting smarter. Soon, they will start winning. jk

 

[stormtrooper412]

Not river tiles, so only +1 I think, which is why I delayed them

edit: through 152 turns, a bit behind Olodune but with 1 city less

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Oh yeah, it's plains. Still, those are 4f1h tiles.

 

[Olodune]

t224 SV

Spoiler :

This is my second Freedom SV game of Civ 5 and it went a little better than the first one. The Order habits are hard to kick.

I'm still surprised how easy it is to get the required gold. I didn't even need to take out any loans in this game -> I now see that dropping the two extra Commerce tenets is doable.

t177 Plastics
Gold collected t212
Last SP t217

If China had been a little less useful I'd have landed the LtoP and would have had a real shot at t215. With more Faith AND a worse China I think I could get to t210 on this map.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Nice.

I expect mine a fair bit later

 

[KissBlade]

Turn 240 DomV

Spoiler :

Turn 240 Dom Victory. Wasted a lot of time near endgame because I couldn't make up my mind on which one was a faster win, Domination or Science towards the end.

Went Tradition 4 city => Commerce open => Exploration open => Rationalism open => Order.
Went for longbow before University to take my continent. Then I milled around a big going heavy Science while Persia ended up running rampant all over his taking out Mongolia utterly and then gangbanging China over with Russia. They ended up getting China's Great Wall and also controlled basically all the wonders either from them building it or conquering them from China ... I got a good beachhead on Mongolia's coastal cap so swimmed over my squad of longbow-turned-gatling guns. I couldn't really push because I only had 7 of those and the surrounding cities were really annoying to take so I made peace and swam my SoTL's over to China's cap to take it instead and make peace. Persia's cap was super inland and he had a literally carpet of cannons/rifles so I waited till my range+1 battleships were online because they were the only things that can shoot in range and had no counterthreat whatsoever so a Cavalry + 4 battleships took the cap. Moscow fell at the end when I chain bulbed to Stealth Bomber/Xcom.

Ignored religion completely (in fact, forgot to use my faith to buy a great scientist + engineer near the end hence the 2.8K faith surplus. hah!)

Thanks for the map!

Spoiler :

El Dorado needs to be deleted from this game =\.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Welp, both science and diplomacy failed, so for my next attempt, I'll try LB genocide

 

[budweiser]

I bet CV would be good because

Spoiler :

Its easy to grow since Venice is your neighbor, meanwhile Pacal & Venice will make all kinds of nice wonders which you can take with LB. And then you have a whole continent to farm for artifacts. You could even take a full exploration tree.

 

[Olodune]

Welp, both science and diplomacy failed, so for my next attempt, I'll try LB genocide

What happened? You had a solid game going. I estimated you'd win a SV at t239

I bet CV would be good because

Spoiler :

Its easy to grow since Venice is your neighbor, meanwhile Pacal & Venice will make all kinds of nice wonders which you can take with LB. And then you have a whole continent to farm for artifacts. You could even take a full exploration tree.

Spoiler :

I'd like to see an Exploration deity CV. I think you're right that this could be the map for it. I don't think it would beat a peaceful Aesthetics CV, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Yeah but ideology pressure did me in despite having all CSs allied. I hate the fact that the game seems to be hard wired to be a fluster**** unless you go Order. So I turned to Diplomacy and ended up one vote short of a win. Sod it

 

[budweiser]

Olodune - First how many turns do you think you need for a 'peaceful aesthetics' CV? Once you know the answer, then you can start to think how you would do Exploration CV.

Even in the latter case, I still think you need the Aestetics tree for themes, trade bonus etc. Sea trade routes for culture transfers, open borders, etc. This map accelerates so fast, so many possibilties are open.

 

[Olodune]

Yeah but ideology pressure did me in despite having all CSs allied. I hate the fact that the game seems to be hard wired to be a fluster**** unless you go Order.

Spoiler :

I passed World Ideo: Freedom on the 2nd vote; that caused all the AIs to go Freedom excepting my Friend Harun. Problem solved. I like this approach for SVs since World's Fair is the only really impactful resolution.

Olodune - First how many turns do you think you need for a 'peaceful aesthetics' CV?

Yeah. On second thought I think that completing Aesthetics and Exploration could be possible here. You'll mainly lose out on Ideology tenets which may not be so bad. I do like digging up those hidden sites. I haven't done that in a while.

Spoiler :

This map is in-between the Russia and Ottoman map in power: I'd probably finish in the late 210s. Acken would likely finish under 210 ...

But China is a wildcard. If Wu is too fast then missing the early Renaissance wonders will hurt, and will push the CV times up a bit.