T296 Diplo Victory. I love England, it’s so fun to zip around the map with your fleet of ships.
Congrats
@joehedaya1 and
@FritsF1 for your first Deity win! I got mine not too long ago and this is my 4th or 5th win.
I settled in place and quickly explored my small island home. I like isolated starts, it means Napoleon can’t send his carpet of Musketmen at you as soon as he gets Gunpowder. (And that’s what would have happened because guess who is right next door).
When I found The Great Barrier Reef I built a settler as soon as I could. I was able to get 4 cities up by T100 to fill up my island.
@FritsF1 and I almost had the same city locations, I guess on this small island there are 4 obvious spots so I imagine most will have the same. I got the Salt pantheon and so my religion started up quickly and I was able to spread it to both France and Korea. So I was swimming in gold due to Tithe. The last few games I’ve played I have used my second prophet to spread my religion before enhancing it; this seems to work well to get your religion ramped up quickly.
I only built one Longbowman; I really didn’t need an army until the Industrial era came along. I did build a lot of Ships of the Line because I planned on attacking Germany because he had the Forbidden Palace. I was at peace for all of the game until ideologies. So when Bismarck started to get belligerent I was ready for war. Luckily, Sejong thought Germany was a threat to the stability of the world and asked me to go to war against Bismarck; so I agreed.
I took a couple of small German expansions on little islands near me with my SotL. One of them I just kept pounding from the sea hoping my ally, Tyre, would take it – and they finally did. I then upgraded to Battleships and set sail for Germany proper. He had subs around so I lost a few ships but was able to conquer a large piece of land including Berlin which had the Forbidden Palace a couple turns before the World Leader vote. I barely used any ground troops; the English fleet did all the work.
- How useful was your UA?
I love the English UA. Naval battles are a lot of fun. It doesn’t have the movement restrictions of land war, and the UA allows even more movement. It’s especially nice because it affects embarked troops too. The extra spy is just icing on the cake.
- Did you use spying to your advantage?
With the extra spy I was able to steal quite a few techs from almost all the AI.
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
The map helped a lot. England on a water map – yes! And it was nice to be able to reach some of the AI without having to go over the ocean. It was an interestingly shaped world too, with nicely formed land masses.
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
This is only my 4th or 5th Deity victory so I played it careful at first. But when I got my naval fleet up and running I went to war.
- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
Full Tradition into Patronage and Rationalism. Then followed Korea to Freedom with the third ideology. I wanted to use the tenets that gives you influence to CS for unit gifts and trade routes. Turned out to be really powerful, I was easily ally with almost all the CS without having to spend much gold on them.
- What techs did you prioritize?
I first played normally to Education. But then prioritized getting to Navigation for SotL; this normally comes later but with England I’ve got to do it. Then I did something else I normally don’t do – I beelined Globalization for the extra delegates for Diplomats. I even skipped Satellites and ignored Hubble Space Telescope, something I normally go for every game.
- What did you think of the map and settings?
Map was great, especially for England. The map fit the civ, I like that. I like small continents too, it’s better than normal continents because it tends to lessen the chance for a runaway AI on the other continent. And thank you for turning off ‘no city razing’!
