Theory crafting a Deity win with no tech trading (huge Pangaea): Elizabeth of Sumeria Great Wall EE

[Kaitzilla]

Spoiler Game Report 3 620BC (Grudge Match Game) :

Took the Viking capital and started eyeing the rest of his cities, but Monty came at me again for the 3rd time with his 2nd DOW.
Had to make peace with Ragnar so I could focus fully on Montezuma.
He gave me a garbage hilltop city near some Monty soldiers, so I gave it to Shaka and bumped my diplomacy up with +3 Fair Trade bonus

Spoiler :

Monty was nice enough to have a giant stack of Chariots and his unique unit, the weak 5 swordsmen with woodsman bonuses.
My shock-city raiders axes killed a bunch, killed a bunch more when Monty attacked, and then finished them off the next turn.
I pushed right into Monty's north and captured a juicy city for more

Spoiler :

A new mini stack appeared.
It had a Catapult!
I entered the terrifying era where I could get steadily steamrolled by giant AI armies.
They can slowly bombard my city defenses to 0% and then attack with huge collateral damage.

My Axe sniped the Catapult and the rest of the stack suicide-attacked.
The following turn my scout Chariot showed yet another stack with a Catapult or two, so I signed peace.

Spoiler :

Need Walls to survive in the Catapult era.
A giant AI stack of doom with 1 catapult will spend lots and lots of turns bombarding down 50% wall defenses, but if the stack has 0 Catapults they will suicide attack the city with full 50% defenses or go around it.
Horse Archers or Knights doing flanking attacks to destroy siege outside cities can be quite difficult if the stack is defended by a strong anti-horse unit like War Elephants.

Flanking(the new ability for mounted units to kill siege weapons) how does it work?

How does flanking work? I know it deals damage if the unit survives(either withdraws or wins) but how much and to how many and how? Does it work like colleteral damage? How many units can you deal damage to at once? Since colleteral damage is not affected by HP of the unit, you would need to...

forums.civfanatics.com

A 0.1 hp catapult that attacks and dies does full collateral damage.

Anyway, disaster struck next.
Stalin declared war!
I need to check for AI plotting more often since I don't have BUFFY fist icon this game.

No giant stack, just a Chariot stealing 2 of my Workers. >_>

Spoiler :

Bonus pic of the war vs. barb galleys to the north and the precious seafood I need to trade for happiness resources and per turn.

Shaka asked for the 4th time that I join his war against Alex, and this time I said yes.
My hilltop Bronze city needed to be a fortress anyway, I needed shared war diplo points with Shaka before he killed/vassaled Alex or ended the war, and Shaka had Alex pinned down.

Figured I had 10 to 20 turns before a Stalin stack of doom showed up from his homeland if it wasn't already on the way, so I took -1 diplo with everyone that was Pleased with Ragnar and DOW'd him again.
I really needed the !

The new war went poorly.
His 3 galleys counterattacked at his old capital, I got bad rolls and lost a lot of highly promoted axes at the hilltop city, and lost all but 1 super veteran Axe by the time I took the marble city.

Spoiler :

Monty came again with war plotting and a stack.
Was I targeted a 4th time with a 3rd DOW?!
NOPE!!! He went north and attacked Genghis.
No brutal 2 front war yet haha.

Spoiler :

Stalin showed up at 620BC ready to rumble with my hilltop copper city, but I should be able to get Walls built.
Thankfully no Russian Catapult yet.


Now I have to decide whether to continue vs. Ragnar or join Monty vs. Genghis and remove that trouble from my east.
Joining the war vs. Monty probably not a good idea right now.

A Friendly Shaka to my south would go a long way towards securing my borders, but this game could still blow apart on me at any moment.
Hyuana Capac is teching and building wonders like crazy.

Monty has a capital churning out probably 1 unit per turn with the insane deity difficulty cost reduction.

Might do Archery next for ultra cheap Bowmen to staff hilltop cities and soak up Catapult collateral damage, but the gold cost is high to maintain them.

Spoiler :

The dire tech speed situation is crazy.
I should have rolled a capital with gems or something.

So many armies and units!
I'll shorten future reports and just hit the highlights.
Don't need every war and city battle.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Spoiler Game Report 4 20BC (Grudge Match Game) :

Without any Catapults, Stalin suicided his whole stack against my fortress city.
Peace Treaty followed soon after.

Shaka and Genghis Khan both got Currency and a large amount of
I saw that both had empires with land tiles touching 8 of my land tiles, so I could beg for triple gold amounts.
Got 350 from Shaka.
The gold begging limit is basically the number of turns since the player has met the AI * power ratio (x3 if they share a long border)

Genghis was Cautious with me, so I needed to have 75% as many Soldiers as him or more to get a successful demand.
So, I waited until Monty's stack of doom vanished attacking Mongolia and then made the demand when Khan was at his weakest.
Success! 300 and -1 diplomacy.

Spoiler :

After Stalin was dealt with, I moved my stack to attack weakened Alex and try to get some more western hilltop cities.
I followed Shaka's stack of doom around and got 2 free cities.
Dumb AI!

Next, my huge western army moved towards China's capital so I could capture the Pyramids at his capital which was lightly defended.
Then China peace vassaled to Shaka!
No Representation for me.

Spoiler :

Teched Writing -> Archery -> Meditation -> Priesthood -> Code of Laws.
With half-priced Courthouses and Great Spies being particularly strong, I figured I could use Caste and get a Great Scientist to bulb Alphabet as soon as I got Math.
By far my biggest expense is City Maintenance gold costs.

Pillaged all the I could.
Put cottages everywhere with a lot of cities having x2 Scientists.

Northern cities were a mess of barb galleys until I put scouts and chariots up there to fogbust after losing a fleet and 2 crab improvements.


Biggest difference maker was getting Shaka to Friendly.
Shaka will never plot or declare war on me as long as we are Friendly, so my southern border is secure. (for now)
With China as Shaka's vassal and multiple western hilltop walled cities to soak up any giant AI attacks from the west, my empire is finally starting to feel secure.
Only really need to worry about that psycho Montezuma and to a lesser extend the all-powerful Hyuana Capac if he decides he wants my head.
With Shaka, I maxed out the shared war bonus at +4 and got +4 fair trade bonus by giving him 2 Viking cities, 1 gift city, and 1 Greek city.

Spoiler :

Also got Hyuana Capac to Pleased since he went free religion from a wonder, and my 1 (Liberate) gift city gave +4 Fair Trade bonus somehow.
City gifting will be further abused when I gift Ragnar (1 city on an island currently) a city close to my capital full of spies.
I'll be sure to get all his techs, and he can no longer threaten me.

Shaka is Friendly with Monty and I, so I don't know who he is plotting war against right now.

All the wimpy western AI are at war with each other.

Genghis lost a big hilltop city to Monty and is about to lose another.
I am going to attack Genghis before he vassals to Monty probably.

Spoiler :

 

[jnebbe]

Spoiler Game Report 4 20BC (Grudge Match Game) :

Without any Catapults, Stalin suicided his whole stack against my fortress city.
Peace Treaty followed soon after.

Shaka and Genghis Khan both got Currency and a large amount of
I saw that both had empires with land tiles touching 8 of my land tiles, so I could beg for triple gold amounts.
Got 350 from Shaka.
The gold begging limit is basically the number of turns since the player has met the AI * power ratio (x3 if they share a long border)

Genghis was Cautious with me, so I needed to have 75% as many Soldiers as him or more to get a successful demand.
So, I waited until Monty's stack of doom vanished attacking Mongolia and then made the demand when Khan was at his weakest.
Success! 300 and -1 diplomacy.

Spoiler :

After Stalin was dealt with, I moved my stack to attack weakened Alex and try to get some more western hilltop cities.
I followed Shaka's stack of doom around and got 2 free cities.
Dumb AI!

Next, my huge western army moved towards China's capital so I could capture the Pyramids at his capital which was lightly defended.
Then China peace vassaled to Shaka!
No Representation for me.

Spoiler :

Teched Writing -> Archery -> Meditation -> Priesthood -> Code of Laws.
With half-priced Courthouses and Great Spies being particularly strong, I figured I could use Caste and get a Great Scientist to bulb Alphabet as soon as I got Math.
By far my biggest expense is City Maintenance gold costs.

Pillaged all the I could.
Put cottages everywhere with a lot of cities having x2 Scientists.

Northern cities were a mess of barb galleys until I put scouts and chariots up there to fogbust after losing a fleet and 2 crab improvements.


Biggest difference maker was getting Shaka to Friendly.
Shaka will never plot or declare war on me as long as we are Friendly, so my southern border is secure. (for now)
With China as Shaka's vassal and multiple western hilltop walled cities to soak up any giant AI attacks from the west, my empire is finally starting to feel secure.
Only really need to worry about that psycho Montezuma and to a lesser extend the all-powerful Hyuana Capac if he decides he wants my head.
Maxed out shared war at +4 and got +4 Fair Trade by giving him 2 Viking cities, 1 gift city, and 1 Greek city.

Spoiler :

Also got Hyuana Capac to Pleased since he went free religion from a wonder, and my 1 (Liberate) gift city gave +4 Fair Trade bonus somehow.
City gifting will be further abused when I gift Ragnar (1 city on an island currently) a city close to my capital full of spies.
I'll be sure to get all his techs, and he can no longer threaten me.

Shaka is Friendly with Monty and I, so I don't know who he is plotting war against right now.

All the wimpy western AI are at war with each other.

Genghis lost a big hilltop city to Monty and is about to lose another.
I am going to attack Genghis before he vassals to Monty probably.

Spoiler :

Have you used espionage economy in this game yet? Just read through your guide and there might be something I'm missing but if my math is right it sounds insane. You could bulb philo for 1300 or get a GSpy instead to infiltrate and if you have all the bonuses you could steal philo instead for as little as 300 and then you still have 2700 to steal more tech with? I definitely need to try it out some time!

 

[sampsa]

Have you used espionage economy in this game yet? Just read through your guide and there might be something I'm missing but if my math is right it sounds insane. You could bulb philo for 1300 or get a GSpy instead to infiltrate and if you have all the bonuses you could steal philo instead for as little as 300 and then you still have 2700 to steal more tech with? I definitely need to try it out some time!

Yes, is insanely powerful. The problem is that only on deity you will run into situations where you are not ahead in tech. So for me, it's a strategy exclusively for deity level. Of the strategy&tips deity players, @drewisfat and Kaitzilla are the experts of the -strategy.

 

[jnebbe]

Spoiler :

Did a little testing, assuming you get every discount which really isn't too hard, and including a 20% distance penalty and the failiure rate, 1 = 7.6!!!
(Philo costs 1200, 1200x8=9600, 9600/1260EP spent=7.62 beakers on average)

Knowing this it looks incredibly strong to run espionage slider while you're say recovering from a war and are going to be teching slow anyway, you're going to get significantly more beakers than if your commerce went into science, even if you're only getting say 1EP=5beakers it's still much better.
GreatWAll is ofcourse completely map dependent but looks much better now, in my test I stole 14 techs worth 25600 beakers in a single turn from a single Infiltrate City Mission and possibly many tens of thousands more beakers when you consider tech trading over the course of the entire game
Courthouses look much better now, -50% maintenance and +15pt

So much I wanna try in a real game now =D

 

[Kaitzilla]

Have you used espionage economy in this game yet? Just read through your guide and there might be something I'm missing but if my math is right it sounds insane. You could bulb philo for 1300 or get a GSpy instead to infiltrate and if you have all the bonuses you could steal philo instead for as little as 300 and then you still have 2700 to steal more tech with? I definitely need to try it out some time!

Ya, in my latest play period I have started using Espionage to steal techs.
The steal cost is 1.5 times the beaker cost of the tech, but with -50% spy wait bonus (very easy to achieve on Marathon speed), just that one bonus is enough to make it competitive with teching normally.
I say that because most techs get the 20% research bonus for having completed the prerequisite tech.

However, in this game if all the AI know the tech already, there is a further 30% research bonus, so teching something all the AI know is more cost-effective than espionage with 1 bonus.
But!
If I have 1 in a city that I give away and the AI has 0, I can get a -50% city culture bonus too.
This makes stealing techs cheaper than teching in every way until the AI can somehow get a Size 1 city to produce culture somehow.
If I'm targeting a civ using the Caste civic, one that has the Cultural trait and gets +2 per turn in every city, or one running the same religion that is in my gift spy city, I try to steal all their techs on turn 0 of the city gift.
Or I will spend a Great Artist and put 4000 into the city so I can steal from them the rest of the game.

I'll try to talk about what I did a bit more in the next game report.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Spoiler Game Report 5 part 1 535AD (Grudge Match Game) :

Every time I DOW'd an AI, I got a lot of -1 diplo with other AI who were Pleased or Friendly with my target civ.
Sucked, but any easy expansion is worth that cost usually.
I'd be silly to just let Monty conquer all of Genghis and vassal him without taking a piece for myself.

First Mongol city went ok.
Longbow behind a wall can really wreck Axes, but I got some good damage on the 1st attack.
One of the best things about BUFFY mod is that it tells you your % chance to do 0 damage which is very good information to know before attacking.
I really missed knowing if I had 15% chance to do no damage or 37% chance.

Spoiler :

Next, Shaka and his peace-vassal China attacked Japan and his colony Korea.
I joined in to get shared war diplomacy building up with China. (I maxed out shared war with Shaka already)
Then Stalin peace vassaled to Shaka and joined the war against Japan too!
I started to build diplomacy points with both China and Russia (shared war takes 8 turns to build up +1 diplomacy point)

Spoiler :

The 2nd Mongol city had a Longbow and 3 Shock Axes behind a wall, and I died in droves taking the city. >_<
Oh well, units are cheap on Marathon.

Spoiler :

The Mongol capital was on a hill and had 2 Longbows, so it might as well have been invicible against my Axe army.
I bided my time until Monty conquered a few more cities and then marched up to Genghis' capital with Catapults.
I also tried to invade a northern island city while waiting on Monty, but Triremes blocked the way so I abandoned the effort and moved back to waiting near the capital.

Finished Math and used my 1st Great Person scientist to bulb Alphabet.
Many cities switched to build , I quickly saw that my espionage target Ragnar only had 4 or 5 techs for me, and I realized I needed to tech Monarchy myself.
Hyuana Capac's favorite civic is Hereditary Rule, and my wars against Japan and Mongolia meant I needed +1 more diplo to reach Pleased.

The difference between Cautious and Pleased cannot be overstated.
At Cautious, if a warmonger civ decides to plot war against the human, there is roughly a 50% chance it gets voided. (Exact numbers for each AI are in the DanF spreadsheet)
At Pleased, if a warmonger civ decides to plot war against the human, there is a 80% or 90% it nips itself in the bud and cancels itself.

I needed all the biggest civs like Shaka, Montezuma, and Hyuana Capac to be Pleased or even Friendly if I could manage it.
At deity difficulty, there is a -1 diplomacy modifier that is hidden with all AI vs. the human due to the difficulty.
Also, some of the AI have a hidden -1 diplomacy modifier with the human (base attitude). Shaka and Monty do, but Hyuana Capac does not.
Normally -3 diplo is Annoyed, -2 to +2 diplo is Cautious, +3 to +9 diplo is Pleased, and +10 diplo or more is Friendly.
With Montezuma on deity I need +5 for Pleased.
With HC on deity I need +4 for Pleased.

Spoiler :

The giant war vs. Japan lasted only 11 turns before he was forced to vassal to Shaka along with Korea.
Mao picked this time to end his voluntary vassalage to Shaka, so I could once again target him for Pyramids if I wanted.

Spoiler :

My spy city finally grew to Size 2 and whipped a Monument and spent one turn to produce 1
I spread Judaism there with a missionary, so there should have been no way for Ragnar to produce any culture for a long time.
Since he only had 1 city, he gratefully took my spy city gift on another continent.
Even better, we had open borders so my spy stack wouldn't be getting killed constantly in between turns.
Also, he had no soldiers to walk into the city to combat culture pressure + revolts and menace my peace of mind.

Had enough built up and -50% wait spies to steal Construction, Currency, and Calendar in that order of importance.
Later I wanted Iron Working and noticed my city bonus went way down.
Gah! I forgot the Monument is not destroyed when the city gets gifted. >_<
Oops, live and learn.

Spoiler :

Mao decided to join the beating of Genghis and joined in.
Great!
Stalin also gave up being a peace vassal to Shaka, so Shaka had just Japan and Korea as involuntary vassals.

Gave 2 cities to Monty that were closer to his capital than someone elses capital to qualify for (Liberate) bonus.
Being Pleased with Monty meant I could beg for 10 from him no matter how weak I was militarily and he would give me 10 turns of peace.
Plus, there would be a chance for the successful beg and peace treaty to stop him plotting war against me if he was targeting me and just started "we have enough on our hands right now".
Haven't begged Monty in this game yet, so no worries about hoping for a 5% chance each turn of him forgetting an earlier beg attempt.

Spoiler :

Once a great deal of cities produced 2 100 Catapults from 2-pop whipping, I revolted to Hereditary Rule and instantly became Pleased with Hyuana Capac.
Stole Polytheism, Monotheism, and around 200 from Ragnar finishing off all the good things I could get from him and his spy city.
Looked around and decided to steal from Genghis next.
Then HC started plotting war!
I quickly begged 10 from him and succeeded in getting a 10 turn peace treaty, but he will still plotting.
Slowly I started reinforcing my western city, sent 3 Scouts west to look for his armies, and moved in against Genghis' capital with Catapults right as Monty arrived.

Spoiler :

 

[Kaitzilla]

Spoiler Game Report 5 part 2 535AD (Grudge Match Game) :

Bombarded the capital down to around 45% defenses.
Then I let Monty's huge stack blast it down to 0% in 1 turn.
Hit the defenders 5 times with catapults and captured the city pretty easily.

Finished off 2 more northern cities, but the HC situation had me uneasy.
Signed peace with Genghis for a bunch of gold.
Then I gave him Spy City 2 which was about 9 tiles away from one of his mainland cities. (only -1 traded with worst enemy from Monty over this I think)
I wanted to wait until Genghis was a vassal to Monty and at peace with China, but I needed Feudalism now!

So I stole Feudalism, Civil Service, and Monty's unit walked right past the spy city without capturing it lol.
2 turns later I stole Horseback Riding and started whipping War Elephants.

Then HC DOW'd China and Napoleon joined in.
I was safe from the Inca!

After that Mao captured the size 1 Spy City 2 and it autorazed, but no biggie.
I whipped a Settler and Hindu missionary and built it again for Genghis.

Spoiler :

After my Spy City 2 gift burned, the inevitable happened and Genghis vassaled to Monty ending the eastern war.

China's stack of doom started marching west through my entire empire to go attack HC.
I kept wanting to attack the lightly defended Chinese cities, but the Stack of Doom marching through my empire made me keep hesitating.

Founded Spy City 2 a second time and after a turn to build 1 I gave it to Genghis and stole Metal Casting + Machinery.

Then a huge event occurred!
Shaka started plotting and then a few turns later DOW'd Hyuana Capac!
HC retaliated the next turn by paying Monty 1000's of to DOW Shaka!!!
HC also made peace with China.

Spoiler :

I'm brutally torn on whether to:
1) attack China with minimal help from France and try to get Pyramids?
2) attack the vastly powerful Shaka as he rampages in Incan westlands while Monty+Genghis attacks him in the east?
3) join hands with Shaka and give Monty a savage beating sucker punch he richly deserves?

Genghis will tech Engineering in 1 more turn for me to steal!
Lot of dead spies due to not having open borders with Genghis.

Jeez, Shaka and Monty have some big stacks.
Not sure where Hyuana Capac's giant stack is.
It never really showed up to attack China during their short war.

Spoiler :