Double post for the good cause!
1. Civilization - Russia
Map - Shuffle, Standard, Epic speed
Victory Type - Diplomatic win
Relative Rank - Harder (Immortal)
Outcome - Moral defeat
Info - Tech Trading OFF, Research Agreements enabled.
Summary -
This map more or less turned out to be solely islands, and a small continent for Ethiopia and I.
Uneventful early game - built the AI-neglected wonders (Pyramids, Temple of Artemis, Great Lighthouse, Oracle), minimalist military to defend myself -Ethiopia would have been too difficult to take on land early-, I explored early to find other civs and city-states. The middle game was marked by unhappiness hovering between -10 and -25 for about 150 turns, until I got the adequate Rationalism policy for religious unrest. I hadn't managed to found a religion, and had very little faith generation, therefore the Mayans and Ethiopia were CONSTANTLY sending missionaries to spread their own religion in my cities, and it tanked my happiness into the absolute ground without me being able to do anything about it.
The Mayans were leading by a huge margin -both in tech and military-, but all the rest were within a few hundred points of each others. Because of the map layout, the warmongering was totally absent until Ideologies kicked in and boy... did it get messy then!
I didn't see the chaos coming, because everyone -except for Mayans- got to Modern era roughly around the same time, and the huge diplomatic penalty for differing ideologies meant wars erupting very rapidly left and right. I had almost no military when 4 neighboring civs declared war on me (very difficult positions to defend, as opposed to my last game as England). I lost two cities and one of my city-state allies was captured, but by focusing on military production and negotiating peace with the right people, I managed to take both my cities back plus capture another (from the Aztecs) and liberate a city-state.
These events set me back tremendously in research and production, therefore a scientific victory seemed unrealistic. I set my eyes on diplomacy, having managed to enact a Sphere of Influence on three city-states already, and being allied with two more (plus a few embassies, Forbidden Palace and social policy bonuses). Ethiopia kept its Autocracy ideology until the very end -while everyone else was Order- and thus kept waging small wars on me the whole game, but wasn't powerful enough to break through.
Ultimately I won because of AI incompetence.
1. Mayans, Indonesia and India sent approximately 15 great diplomats, during the whole game, to Almaty which had been under my Sphere of Influence for a long time. One GD after the other, and nowhere else, even though it had strictly no effect. Should look into that!;
2. I "beelined" -as much as you can beeline with this mod- to Hubble late game, thinking I would use the Great Scientists to bulb towards the tech giving +1 vote/diplomat. The Mayans were at 13 turns on Hubble when I started prod on it, and Indonesia at 3 turns... yet neither finished it, instead they let ME build it (in roughly 20 turns, mind you! I had only one engineer giving ~1100 hammers and miserable prod in my capital). Sort of ridiculous. Ultimately I got said tech a few turns before a global hegemony vote, and it gave me the win.
The Mayans needed only two boosters to complete their spaceship, and were influential with 5 out of 6 civs. Had I not won that very vote the game was 100% lost.
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As for Russia: imo the civ is fun, albeit on the weak side.
Science for buying tiles is a great concept, but there are only so many good tiles to buy and so much money to go around, especially early game when this UA theoretically shines (it grants basically nothing come mid-late game)! Perhaps if reduced tiles buying cost was also implemented in the UA...
Science from strategic resources is OK, if highly situational. I had two spots each of horses and irons in all, but zero coal, one spot of aluminum and zero uranium. Double amount allowed for great trades though! I had money and resources flowing in for days. Horses for everyone!
Cossacks I didn't care for, and the Ostrog (?) was good for the mines bonus, but mediocre on it's "Great Wall"-ish ability. Because all the battling was naval, and a single ship keeps all water tiles from being worked, the slowing effect was basically non-existent. (Unless I'm mistaken on the mechanics, anyway).
Cool but underwhelming civ.
. It feels very good getting a historical event because they are so good with Arabia. With other civs I didn't care as much because +2 tourism early game isn't impressive at all, but +3 science, +3 culture and +37 GPP is huge.
I dominated my continent and another which was very close (I was somewhat between them).
