5/21 Version
Goddess of Protection deleted. Great Lighthouse at 4 policies. Barbarian exp at the -1 setting (I promise I don't exploit). RAs no tech trading. Resources revealed. Large 14 28 Shuffle (Pangaea) Marathon speed. No time victory. Ice Free Coasts.
Carthage
Diplomatic Victory
Deity (Above)
Challenge
I'm now undefeated in Deity games! One and Zero! (never tried one in vanilla either, in fact I played the vastly inferior version of Civ 5 maybe only five times before discovering this much much better version) I wanted to try one Deity games before adding some other mods, the JFD stuff, I see there's an Enlightenment compatibility mod now, and I found a mod that turns barbarians into dinosaurs. Dinosaurs! So I picked the civ I've played more than any other (with current uniques, RIP Doge Palace and old time 5 move Mongolian Knights), and went for it, not really expecting anything. And then a lot of things went right, I definitely don't think I'm really a Deity player.
(And of course the Carthage set is about to be nerfed or at least changed as well, so I wanted to play them once more before the free Harbor coast yields go away.)
So first of all, beyond just the normal advantages of playing on Marathon, the Carthage UA is prob OP on that setting. I was isolated enough in Desert and Mountains that I didn't have to spend all that gold on military only, buying quite a lot of workers as well. So my cities, while not the greatest (again, deserts and mountains, and tundra in the north too), they were built up prob before the AI's. Combined with the Progress adv, I even had to sit and have them wait before Currency and villages, so much got done. And buying a turn one Scout got me so many ruins, culture, a tech, etc. I see why Standard speed players build Scouts first now. No early war, so didn't have a chance to use the UU except some promotion gaining from scouting til I reached AI borders.
The map also produced this large bay/sea thing, so there was quite a bit more chance to use Naval power and free Harbors than Pangaea might imply. I never did get full control of its entrance but I dominated the interior with ranged units. (You could sorta say I was Holland the bay was the Med, and I never conquered southern Spain. The end of the sea went farther north then that, but kinda)
When the first war with Egypt finally came, I had enough composites and swordsmen to fight him off pretty easy. He even gave me some kinda forward settles on and in that bay I mentioned. After peace with me, he decided to attack Monty, and that's where the things went right for me. Rams bought Iron for me at 25! gold per turn. No one else would pay more than ten, but Rams had a need I guess. 5 for 25 each and another at whatever he had left 20 or so. Now, I will say that he accomplished his goals, that iron helped turn a stalemate into a domination. 145 gpt for 4 cities, including a capital, and a liberated CS ally doesn't sound so bad, but of course its not that simple.
Esp since I put that money into Galls and used them to take complete control of the bay/sea from him. Didn't help him that he couldn't heal his Iron units in this war, and this was still late Longsword era. His core was fine at this point tho. I had to deal with Brazil next, much more important. Pedro built Taj, Chichen, and had a GA monopoly. Not good. And his super super large cities from the Bands annoyed me. Luckily, he was on my South, so I could take him out. I somehow had the tech lead at this point (early Industrial Era) from RAs and things, so I thought it wouldn't take much. I even made an advantageous city trade with him, and began to set up. But he out of seemingly nowhere declared on me before I was ready, I messed up a few things, and when he paid Egypt to DoW me as well, I was actually in trouble for a second. Luckily, Rams, after conquering some CS allies and taking a few of his cities back, made peace I believe the first turn he was allowed (Get that paper Rams), I got Artillery, and it was soon over for Brazil. This did piss off the Peacemonger Alliance tho, I was summarily kicked out. No more RAs and no more lucrative lux trades. Almost got sad for a second they don't get locked in anymore lol.
Eventually I took Egypt's core too with boring era-ahead warfare, but mostly the rest of the game was using my trade routes and some small wars to gain and keep CS allies. I got decolonized once, but luckily it was before that's a real disaster, and I had a huge amount of gpt. I forgot that you can't win Diplo until half the game is in the Atomic, which in this one really meant the leaders in the Info, but once it did I won on the first taking, allied with all 13 CSes still alive of the original 28. Barely defeated Decolonization 41-38 and 50ish 40ish in the last two votes before the winning vote. Those would have been disastrous, and I prob would have had to hope I could keep the tech lead and win that way, with Austria and Arabia quickly catching up. And may have even put the Iroquois in striking distance of the UN win with their main competition for allies wiped out.
Should mention that I forgot to change the percentage value for Reformation beliefs, which means only the Basil builder got one. This may have hurt Mongolia and Venice, not quite true contenders. Tho that would have been votes that might have gone against me.
Oh, I forgot to mention what a great religion Genghis brought me. Somehow a missionary of his traversed the whole map to bring me Mastery, Zealotry, Desert Spirit, and Mosques. Much much better than the religions close by. Even going Progress, I always use as many nongold specialists as I can anyway. Idk if that's right, but that's what I do. I wish I played with that UI Religion map mod, Hinduism was in the very southwest and the very northeast and nowhere in between.
So I disable Goddess of Protection because India always picks it and then doesn't found, and I don't like facing civs who don't really get to use their UA. He succeeded at founding with Desert Spirit, so yay success...until he got DoWed by Genghis and maybe could have used Goddess of Protection. Between India, Siam, and the land allotted for Venice, Genghis prob had a quarter of the map in the Classical, and then never expanded again.
Cultural
Culture output.
