The Deity Challenge Line-up #33 - Songhai

[SooHongLoo]

Spoiler :

This is my third map and it seems that the first two were rated easy and I agree that the Russian Map was very easy for whatever a player wants to do with that map. The England map was easy but a little more on the tricky side for Domination and a little bit too much work for me to get into Longbows when I had a wall of water on one side and a wall of CS goodness on the other so for me it was a no-brain turtle game.

This game is harder but a little more annoying to me. I would like to get the War Machine rolling but I opted to play a tech game and friendly on all fronts. The one thing about this game that I am happy about is that I was able to block any sort of city spam from The Hunnic Empire with my one little warrior and I brought over an archer as well trying to take out a barb camp that I was late to. I bribed him to war with Germany so that should keep him busy and it seems he didn't try to expand to his West and is playing Friendly with my only DOF Morocco.

My NC was around turn 85 and I had to rush buy 3 Libraries which is unusual but I wanted to try to get a religion and my other expos just didn't have much in the way of growth or production. I guess all this jungle will be nice now that I have EDU on turn 111 and rush bought the University.

I would of enjoyed trying to take down England in the early game but she was too far and I find her easier to deal with after getting the tech advantage on her so I gave her a free lux and some gold and my 1st Trade Route to get her to ally me but no avail just yet. She did send me two Trade Routes and I took mine out of her to start sending food to Gao. She seems to have taken over Austrias capital.

 

[Olodune]

t232 Domination

Spoiler :

Went for the easy route here: GWBs -> Bombers -> XCOM. This is an average result since I knew the map. I wasn't sure whether to go for CV or Domination until t170. I like air forces since the conquest speed is very fast once Radar is researched - especially if GWBs have been piling in the experience.

Flight 183 (Radio earlier)
Radar 213

The first war was GWBs against Renaissance England. Those Longbowmen are obsolete, Liz:



By the time of the Indian war, bombers are speeding up the pace of conquest:



Nice triple XCOM final capture with Bomber support from land and sea:

 

[beetle]

I re-tried the last half of my Tradition game, took 50+ turns off my SV, but still lost…

Tried HCA, but was not able to conquest much at all. I was surviving okay, but gave up once a civ started building SS parts.

I am trying Liberty again, but Pyramids is going on turn 40. That takes a lot of the fun out of it!

 

[consentient]

Nice win Olodune! Tell me, do you play a more or less straightforward science game until GWB? Or do you do anything in particular?

 

[Dirk1302]

T100

Spoiler :

Had a good start with a culture ruin and 1 or 2 pop ruins. Stole workers from england,austria and 2 from Sydney.
First time around i played sloppy (it was late) buying one library in my 4th city in the north before realizing
that the other in the south took quite some time to finish library there.I also had quite a few problems with barbs from the 2 camps in the south,
it was tricky to hold the wine and horses there. Especially when horsemen arrived. Archers are very vulnerable to quick horsemen and 2 archers is
not really enough to hold against that.
So around T60 i decided to reload from trick 30 the next day but i played far enough to experience that double dow on trick 80 just when i started NC.
I wonder how dangerous that dow really is as Atilla was still fighting Germany and Liz had just made peace with Theresa so her army was nowhere in sight.

Anyway next time around i planned better, founding the city in the north first, not (much) barb problems there and this city has much better production.
Instead of watermills and 2 early caravans i delayed sailing and prioritzed archery->writing this time. Game went much better now, finished 4 city NC around T80 (instead of starting it).
And this time i had 6 archers on the map instead of 3. I was kind of looking forward to that dow as with NC finished i had room to build a lot more archers
and i had the money to upgrade to CB. But this time no dow. As a result i'm in a good position now T100.
Edu was in T97 and i bought universities in Gao, Taghaza. Still made (at least) one mistake i had enough archers
this time to hold the horsemen at bay but it would have been so much easier if i had built one spear.

Will build a fifth city near the fishes and the marble when i have a worker free to connect the marble, have money for a lighthouse and a cargoship from compass prebuilt. I also need
some more happy from either connected ai lux/mercantile cs or circus/colosseum. I'm in doubt about the faith mountain spot,
the expansionist in me says grab it but apart from the faith mountain there's
not much there, a citrus everyone has and cow and a whole lotta jungle. It's also close to Atilla, this must be a bad idea. I should have scoutet that region earlier,
i would have seen the land isn't that good for another city and i would have built Thagaza one tile to the east.


CV and SV are good both good options from here as i am probably in time for all the renaissance wonders. And i have to choose now, CV -> aesthetics here, SV -> patronage.
What would (objectively) be best from here? Also Atilla is quite agressive but is it normal that Liz declares war so early and so often? She was Theresa's throat
round trick40 and has just declared for a second time on the austrian lady.

 

[Olodune]

@consentient

Spoiler :

It wasn't a pure science game - I built the Sistine Chapel thinking I might want a CV. There was also more than the usual investment in units and upgrades. I also messed up the Modern era transition. I wanted World Ideo as the 2nd vote and so rushed Radio (t153) just before the vote - unfortunately the next Proposals went in before the Industrial Era vote tallies and so I was left out of power. Misplay there. Flight can be reached before t170 on this map, but I guess GWBs also need some nicely developed cities.

@Dirk1302

Spoiler :

Nice opening For a good CV I look for plenty of beakers (check) and good production cities (check). The CV competes more directly with the AIs and some of these games show a strong Morocco. SV is fine as well, but you don't have any observatory cities so chasing a fast time (sub 230) could use the 5th and/or 6th city. My games don't usually commit to a VC until the first World Congress proposal or the decision to build the Sistine Chapel. Pisa is very useful for both but the GE option is a lot more attractive to a CV, so that is another decision point.

You are solidly in a winning position for either, but, objectively, I think this is a relatively superior position for a CV.

Nice job with the England game. I'm glad a few dozen games more experience has kept me a whole turn ahead of you I agree with you on Order, until the SV starts to dip below t215 - at that point the production bottleneck starts to get harsh with Order. All the recent sub 200s I've seen posted have been Freedom games.

Edit: Liz is usually quite peaceful. The only thing I can think of is that she likes to expand, and is a little cramped up there. She is more likely to be Guarded and Hostile than most...

 

[peddroelm]

Spoiler :

Edit: Liz is usually quite peaceful. She is more likely to be Guarded and Hostile than most...

Peaceful .. She is was always a bag of crazy and hate marinaded in nitroglycerin in my games.. Easily in top 5 in my personal most hated AI leaders ..Feeling must be mutual ..

Also your modesty is getting in the way of enlightenment for most of the other players (like me) struggling with these challenges .. There would be a lot to learn from watching your LPs .. (even un-commented ones)

 

[consentient]

@Peddro

If you are finding these challenges difficult, it probably has more to do with being out of practise and trying different strategies than anything else. While I agree that Olodune is a great player and overly modest and would love to see LPs from him too, you are clearly a great player too, just maybe a bit rusty.

I also have to agree that Liz is foul. Not quite Top 5 for psychopathy, but close maybe.

 

[stormtrooper412]

yeah peddro you just rusty, mang

 

[Bimblecrumbs]

Of my 2 attempts, honour and tradition, I'll be finishing the tradition map. I echo peddroelm's sentiment about it being a frustrating map; I'm not even enjoying it anymore and just want it to be over. In my honour game I also had countless reloads, which takes away a lot of the fun and is tantamount to cheating if it happens all the time.

I think if I tried 3 city honour I could do it faster, but starting over a 3rd time is simply not going to happen

 

[Dirk1302]

@Dirk1302

Spoiler :

Nice opening For a good CV I look for plenty of beakers (check) and good production cities (check). The CV competes more directly with the AIs and some of these games show a strong Morocco. SV is fine as well, but you don't have any observatory cities so chasing a fast time (sub 230) could use the 5th and/or 6th city. My games don't usually commit to a VC until the first World Congress proposal or the decision to build the Sistine Chapel. Pisa is very useful for both but the GE option is a lot more attractive to a CV, so that is another decision point.

You are solidly in a winning position for either, but, objectively, I think this is a relatively superior position for a CV.

Nice job with the England game. I'm glad a few dozen games more experience has kept me a whole turn ahead of you I agree with you on Order, until the SV starts to dip below t215 - at that point the production bottleneck starts to get harsh with Order. All the recent sub 200s I've seen posted have been Freedom games.

Edit: Liz is usually quite peaceful. The only thing I can think of is that she likes to expand, and is a little cramped up there. She is more likely to be Guarded and Hostile than most...

Spoiler :

I agree about VC. Thinking the game over i also came to the conclusion that no observatory is a pointer SV may not be the best way to go forward. I'm ahead of my England game right now but that'll fade since i will go 5 cities here where i had 7 + observatory in the England game. I can probably not beat my SV time there.

CV is interesting, first game from the forum i played was the Russia game where i did CV. Didn't post about that one, got CV around T240 iirc. See if i can beat that time there. May not be easy since the Russia map was fantastic and Morocco is quite strong in my game.

Indeed i couldn't beat your SV time in the England game. I replayed it 3 times also for practice. First time i messed up just researched and bulbed the techs without thinking too much about the order. I believe SV time was just before T240 then. Took a good look at the tech tree and read up on some issues, replayed from plastics, managing T226 with quite a lot to do at the end.

At that time i read about your SV time so i played it a third time from plastics to see if i could beat it This time i bulbed a bit faster to Apollo so i could have 2 minor cities finishing a part in time. This made the end game much easier At T224 i bulbed PF but didn't get the tech that turn although i had the beakers. Some of the beakers listed only come in next turn. With even more mm i would have been able to get that right. Luckily i realized by then that i could only buy my last GE this turn so i could only use it T225 and there was really no way around that, relief that i didn't have to go through it a 4th time

 

[stormtrooper412]

my god, full Blitzkrieg Modern Armors are really strong

 

[Bimblecrumbs]

T207 Domination

Well after that game I'm going to have a week off from Civ.

A few things to mention before I get on with the writeup:

1. The Songhai city capture UA is everything you all said it is and makes them a great non-honour Dom civ; each city provides about 1-2 purchased units depending on its size. My one request would be to have Egypt as an enemy because it stacks with Burial Tombs for 6x gold per city Unfortunately Landsknechts don't seem to stack with the Songhai UA.
Their barb camp UA also has its merits, providing an extra few hundred gold early game if used correctly.

2. I have a new found respect for Morocco's Berber Cavalry, which get a +50% bonus in desert and a +40% bonus in friendly territory. With these stacked I was dealing with Landship-strength cavalry which were spammed due to them being his UU. It also didn't help that Morocco's cultural borders were wide and full of desert. As you can see in Picture 1, their strength can exceed 70 with flanking and terrain bonuses. I'm very tempted to try Morocco out on a Sandstorm map for laughs

3. People often trash talk the Commerce finisher that grants +1 gold per trading post. While it's nothing compared to the +2 happiness per lux, I feel that it's gold bonus is worthwhile in certain situations like puppet empires. In this game I concentrated on building trading posts and had an enormous income at the end, a fair amount of which came from the +1 gold per trading post (+50 or so by the end). I'm not saying it's good, but it's not worthless either.

Anyway, on to the game...

Spoiler :

A totally standard 3 city tradition with a turn 75NC and an early tithe/pagodas/production/messiah religion due to Kailash. Picture 2 shows my cities several turns later. First food caravan to the cap and the rest to Morocco for good science and gold.

Atilla settled an early city on my side of the mountains so I expected trouble. Lizzie wouldn't make peace after an early worker steal and attacked me on about turn 100; upon seeing her units I had to bribe Attila to attack Bismarck or he'd probably have hit me from behind. I fended off England and DOW'd Attila on turn 143 once I'd hit Chemistry for cannon [Picture 3]. Here I took my time taking his 3 cities due to needing cavalry for the mountain choke point [Picture 4]. His cap fell several turns after that screenshot in a rather uneventful fashion.

I Oxforded Dynamite on T166 (2GS bulbs beforehand) and that's when the real war started. Morocco was the clear target and I sent the majority of my units to attack him and some to attack England, which was a mistake (see above-mentioned Berber Cavalry ridiculousness). This was my reload moment; about 10 turns back in order to send 100% of my army at Morocco. Despite this focused attack I still lost a good few cavalry units to him. His cap eventually died on turn 185 after I had fought my way through 3 of his other cities [Picture 5].

Here I split up my forces and just over half went back north to England, Germany and Venice. The rest went north and assaulted an already broken India, who had had his lands laid waste to by Morocco. From there they continued further north as fast as possible to take Vienna off England. Vienna had Notre Dame, the Forbidden Palace and the Great Wall, and thanks to my minus ~5 happiness I needed it before taking more cities. -4 to +17 was a decent happiness swing [Picture 6]. Those units then stayed around Vienna and lured Lizzie's army away from London.

I had built a road from Gao to London, so my units soon got there and started attacking. Her army was full of annoying +1 range Gatlings, who'd have guessed? Her army score was almost 300k but I'm assuming a lot of that was ships, as she captured Jenne a few turns before the end of the game with a monstrous naval assault. That was far too late to any effect on the game though and London was conquered anyway [Picture 7].

Venice was a walk in the park as always. Enrico had been at war with Bismarck because I made it so, and mostly had pikemen left to defend. I didn't expect him to have much, so I only sent 5 artis, 2 rifles and a cav across the sea [Picture 8].

Germany, on the other hand, was no pushover. Not so much his army, which mainly consisted of rifles, but the 2-tile choke point that had saved him against Attila. A couple of citadels were needed to push my way through. I actually managed to use the other Songhai UA War Canoes after a couple of units went for a watery frolic too close to his cities. Berlin died on turn 207 like Venice and London [Picture 9].

Picture 10 shows my cities at the end of the game. Note the clear lack of Jenne

Techs: Philosophy ---> Education ---> Machinery ---> Chemistry ---> Dynamite.

Social Policies: Tradition 6, Commerce 6, Patronage 2.

 

[consentient]

I've never heard anyone trash the Commerce finisher. If they had, I would have immediately told them that Commerce is the strongest tree. Besides the finisher Protectionism and Wagon Trains are worth huge amounts.

Nice fast DomV!

 

[peddroelm]

commerce finisher also enables sick faith to gold conversion via GM bombs ..

EDIT:

@Bimblecrumbs

wanted to make a short gif with a modern armor 1 hit squishing Berber Cav .. Yes the tank was not at full strength, there were "some" happy issues and he had defender of the faith on top of everything else.. To top it all that BerCav also was under resource penaly .. But that's what blitz is for . Still nice screen shots for the berber cav naysayers ( :cough: Acken :cough: )

Spoiler :

 

[Bimblecrumbs]

I didn't mean the finisher as a whole, just the +1 gold per trading post for finishing the tree that people seem to underrate compared to, say, honour gold. It actually synergises with the rest of the tree; more gold is never a bad thing, even if it doesn't amount to that much. Also good point peddro, I always forget about faith buying great merchants and could have done it this game...

Nice screenshot. A normal cavalry unit dies in that spot, Berbers are great

 

[Olodune]

Berbers are great

In the perfect set-up, yes. Hitting them with Artillery can be shockingly ineffective in that situation. But how often are you fighting in desert in your own culture borders with Cavalry units? I think of Berbers like the Goddess of Protection pantheon - they are in the game to prop up the AI. Like Impi.

Nice Artillery clear Bimblecrumbs - you have just enough investment in beakers. Barely.

 

[Bimblecrumbs]

I sold my universities and libraries once I hit Rifling, but beforehand I had 187 science on turn 157. It's enough!

Of course Berbers are rather situational, but a combined +90% combat bonus is crazy. Is there another unit in Civ V that gets a higher combat strength bonus than that? I'm currently rolling a Morocco game on a Sandstorm map as I suggested I might

 

[adcarrymaokai]

I sold my universities and libraries once I hit Rifling, but beforehand I had 187 science on turn 157. It's enough!

Of course Berbers are rather situational, but a combined +90% combat bonus is crazy. Is there another unit in Civ V that gets a higher combat strength bonus than that? I'm currently rolling a Morocco game on a Sandstorm map as I suggested I might

Try the Scramble for Africa scenario. Ethiopia's Mehal Sefari in that scenario are Giant Death Robots near their capital. With the special African policy tree they get up to 120% bonus or something like that.

 

[SooHongLoo]

Scientific Victory Turn 336!
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Nuclear Madness... good thing the Ai does not like to win at this game even on the hardest level.
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Edit: If at all possible it would be nice to see the DCL with a victory condition and turn time requirement. I know that I can just play by these rules myself and most of you do not agree. This was just a suggestion. I do not worry about the cheating because it is impossible to stop it. I have seen some of my friends download the GOTM map and scout it out and use another user name to play it officially so you know !