The Deity Challenge Line-up #36 - Assyria

[adcarrymaokai]

But Constantinople has a star.

 

[peddroelm]

But Constantinople has a star.

From that position capturing Constantinople from the CS it would've taken me extra 1-2 turns at most. But according to the game rules it isn't even necessary to capture it for domination victory, so I skipped it .

 

[adcarrymaokai]

That still doesn't make sense... unless the game treats a CS-captured capital as a non-capital.

 

[Sclb]

All my cities are settled on subpar spots because of production issues.

5 city tradition SV, map was too large for earlier domination so I just ignored the UA/UU and just turtle. Tried 8 city liberty once earlier and resign at 220 because one of the AI was clearly running away too early and will definitely launch sub 300 and the only way to deal with him would be to DoW and steal his tech. I also got DoW by both neighbors to the NE/SE which made it impossible to win quick.

Restarted, switched to 5 city trad on 2nd try and passed art funding to slow down the game which worked. Settling 3 mountain cities with observatories also help to speed it up despite the arts funding. Paid more attention to diplo, bribe my eastern neighbors to unending war and it was easy from there with no DoW.

Never finished rationalism despite having hermitage and most cultural CS and arts funding and cultural heritage. Only managed SoL and hubble for world wonders.

Spoiler :

World wonders gone super quick at the start. WF was pretty much impossible with ottoman or arabia spamming cities like that.

Ideology pressure is a huge problem on this map as I went freedom, and I had to spend gold to block world ideology order which would crush my happiness.

 

[Acken]

Next map will be posted the 5th. Couldnt work on it the past week due to me going camping.

 

[beetle]

Next map will be posted the 5th. Couldnt work on it the past week due to me going camping.

Glad you are getting out of the house! You are posting these games about as fast I can play them. I finally just won this one last night, so I will post the screen shot in a few hours.

This map was particularly hard for me, since I cannot get my SV under 300 turns. I tried Liberty a few times, and 4/5 city Tradition. One of those games I even got Statue of Liberty and then switched out to Order and built Kremlin -- but still lost SV before T325. I had fun with a 3-city Honor opener, but too slow as usual.

 

[beetle]

Four city Tradition. My second, 4 city try, after two 5 city Tradition fails. I also lost 3 city Honor run and lost three tries with Liberty, each with 7+ cities. But my last Liberty game revealed a surprising strong location for a city -- which even after two games with the placement leaves me a little stumped. So here is my question for the group's collective wisdom:

In the attached screen shot, why is Nimrud well placed? It ends up with more production than the cap, and the cap has Ironworks. There is only one hill in the 2nd ring. It has iron, a camp, a couple cows and two wheats. Nineveh has about as many river tiles, two coppers, a camp, a bison, and one wheat. Yet from mid game, Nimrud is out producing it by about 50%. What is going on?

I planted Nineveh for the bay, and I was pretty happy with it. In my previous Liberty game, I chose the Nimrod location only because it was halfway between Nineveh and the best spot I had to the NW. But it ended up being my best production city, so of course I kept on my next run.

 

[Redaxe]

One of those games I even got Statue of Liberty and then switched out to Order and built Kremlin -- but still lost SV before T325. I had fun with a 3-city Honor opener, but too slow as usual.

If you flip ideology right after you build Statue of Liberty I think you can use your free policy to choose 1 of the new ideology tenets.

 

[beetle]

If you flip ideology right after you build Statue of Liberty I think you can use your free policy to choose 1 of the new ideology tenets.

Correct. I have not risked leaving the SoL free policy hanging, but it does not go to waste! When you flip, the culture counter resets to zero -- so I always try to hold out for the turn I make the pick. In my Assyria games, when I flipped from Freedom to Order, it was always after getting the 6 FL.

 

[consentient]

Wow. This map is huge. Took me forever to find everyone. T84 NC. Been building mainly warriors and completing barb quests, all of which were completely ignored by the AI, who seem to be operating under confused algorithms on this map. They're not expanding much, or building many units. Not sure what they're doing. Plan is for XCOM victory as early as possible.

EDIT: T109 Education

Spoiler :

And, same turn, Nebby of all people stole Calendar from me!

What's going on? I've not fully explored his lands. Is he stuck in trouble?

EDIT 2: T150ish XB and LS war with

Spoiler :

Suleiman

.

Spoiler :

Is this for real? Have the AIs been nerfed somehow? Why aren't they expanding? Why aren't they warring? I have 12 self-founded cities and a ton of luxes and there was no competition or border tensions at all, apart from Suleiman, who I paid to DoW everyone so I could use his army to boot camp my Warrior path units.

Friends with everyone else, no wars apart from mine. I've razed 5 Suleiman cities and only Alex has any problem, and even he has only 'early doubts' or whatever it is.

I can see my Musketmen having 5 or 6 promotions by the time I take on Persia (the next victim) in 30 turns or so.

Not sure how quickly I can get to Stealth and XCOM but this is an absolute walkover. I'm tech leader and am 1st in all Demographics except happiness.

EDIT 3: Turn 200ish.

Spoiler :

Just finished off Harun with Artillery and Infantry, which now have March at a minimum. I think I can take Nebby with these Modern Era units before preparing for the big push with XCOMs.

EDIT 4: T240ish

Doh! I thought that XCOMs were on the warrior line. They are not! My massive army of upgraded warriors has one big unified sob! :'(

 

[consentient]

Update: T247 DiploV

Spoiler :

I decided to take the WL vote so as to end the game. I could have won Domination in around 10 turns now that I had XCOMs. Only Rameses and Alex left to deal with.

The fun went out of the game once I was more than 10 techs ahead, but at least it was instructive as to what you can do when you have a ton of space and luxes.

I think fast CV and SV are possible on this map.

My SPs were Trad-Lib mix, Full Honor, Rat opener and Autocracy to Clausewitz.

I still think there was something very odd with the AI behaviour. They did not expand properly until much later, and by then it was too late. When there is so much space, the Deity AI should fill it all before the Human has a chance. Letting me self-found 12 cities was just suicidal.

 

[Bimblecrumbs]

T252 Domination

Spoiler :

The combo of low production, a huge map and no ruins made this one a long, hard map. I started this 2 weeks ago and can't remember everything; the civfanatics server change came when I wanted to post a ~T200 update. I'll therefore spare you the enormous essay that this could have been

This was my second attempt at the map but I reloaded more than usual. This victory time wouldn't have been possible without some reloads to correct my stupidity; I reckon ~T265 without, so please take this victory with a pinch of salt. I can't help being a perfectionist...

Moved settler by gems, the marsh would have doomed me. T92 3-city NC. Got Sun God for 2+5+2 food and some really nice early growth, especially in Nineveh. I placed the cities for maximum production potential. 3 Royal Library slots filled asap for the xp.

Babylon was chosen first because of Notre Dame/Pyramids. Took him out with cannons/muskets/cav. Annexed Babylon/Nippur so they wouldn't grow and trading post spammed, razing the rest due to happiness worries (was well before commerce finisher).

T191 Artillery came just in time to attack the Ottomans, the huge tech leader. I leeched 6 expensive techs and became tech leader myself. He was at war with Persia and had so many units trapped far to the west. I peaced out, leaving him with a sizeable army. Built Big Ben around this time too.

Went for Arabia next due to Harun's city spam, and remember laughing when I stole Replaceable Parts from a newly-settled 1 pop city. Assyria's UA was invaluable and is so overpowered for long wars (4 techs from Babylon, 6 from the Ottomans, 3 from Arabia, some others).

Got turn 219 Landships with Oxford and from then on conquest was rapid. Egypt came after and wasn't much trouble. By this point all of the strategically-located CSs were mine and provided good distractions:
- Bogota for the Ottomans.
- Hanoi for Egypt.
- Singapore for Persia.
- Ragusa for Greece.
Screenshots of these have been included since they were so useful.

Oil for the tanks was a problem but I found 15; 5 south of Babylon with a great general, 5 in the sea south of cap (had to settle a city and buy a work boat to get this), 5 from Zurich (much delayed due to slow AI tech...). The general lack of oil did mean that no AIs got any planes out though.

From T225 I attacked Persia (prebuilt road), then Byzantium, then Greece. Byzantium's great wall delayed my units for longer than planned. Only Greece had a good army with which to defend, but most of it was trapped the other side of Ragusa. Theodora+GW survived a ~150 turn war with Greece too, so well done her.

The Ottomans warred me right at the end, but I had expected it well before and defended Istanbul just fine.

Social Policies: Tradition 1, Honour 6, Commerce 6, Order 3 (all the available happy tenents), Tradition 2 (Aristocracy).

Key Techs: Philosophy --> Engineering --> Education --> Dynamite --> Industrlialisation --> Biology --> Refrigeration (oil rig) --> Combustion --> Ballistics.

I had 4-5 few research agreements before Dynamite. One planted GS, rest bulbed.

No religion. Bought a couple of merchants though.

I put a Landsknecht/random unit in every. single. city. for happiness.

Why Order you ask? Happiness. I barely had enough by the end of the map, and Autocracy Ideology pressure would have massively delayed my conquest; Persia and Egypt had too much tourism and my culture wasn't great.

 

[Bimblecrumbs]

More screenshots.

 

[Bimblecrumbs]

Nice victory time consentient

 

[peddroelm]

think this was the worst ideology pressure I've ever suffered in CIV .. Near -100 at peak .. (forgot letting the AI pass world ideology Order is a really bad thing : ) ) .. Still Forbidden Palace (bless Nebby) + Liberty roads + Commerce + Autocracy + Honor guards endured.. I've even managed to claw back tourism to 10% influence near the end of the game after buying hotels and airports with reckless abandon ..

Still doesn't quite explain 80 turns finish time difference . I think Harun played very well (expansion and tech wise ; even after burning most of his cities he still kept getting&giving new techs ) in my game making it impossible to tackle him earlier or risk going against a weaker AI and leaving the arabian flank exposed.. ... Suleiman was also huge on expansion but quite poor on tech ..

 

[Bimblecrumbs]

It's just the way the game goes; something I love about Civ is that every game is different, even on the same map.

In my game Suleiman was the tech leader from Medieval onwards, despite the fact that he was very expansionist and aggressive vs. Darius. Harun was attacked by Egypt quite a bit and I feel it held him back. I saw them converting each others' cities and vying for religious domination, which sparked off a lot of conflict.

As for Ideology pressure, I almost risked Autocracy for the 2 free tenents. It was so very tempting but in the end I slept on it and decided against it. Autocracy would have definitely been more useful than Order, however my strategy wasn't so very reliant on it. Landships are effective enough anyway, and stronger without negative happiness.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Turn 143 resign. I tried a wide approach but messed up everything. Barbarians were all over the place and they kept pillaging everything keeping me in pretty constant unhappiness. It's been a while though, I may have forgotten a trick or two

 

[consentient]

Build more units, ST. With 2 units to every camp, the barbs will soon get the message who's boss. I built as many warriors as I could and went after every camp. This also got me all the allies I could ever need, as well. AI sure as hell wasn't interested.

 

[Sclb]

That and Honor opener might be good on this map regardless of peaceful or conquest VC. I kept a few uncleared barb camps and farmed culture off them even in the late game when they spawn infantry or other modern units.

 

[stormtrooper412]

I think the biggest mistake I made was spreading myself too thinly. The terrible production was somewhat offset by plenty of gold though. I'm still kind of unadapted to nice Cultural wins, the whole *workshops before universities* thing is wow