Epic 10: DaveV does Deity (or: Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive)

[DaveV]

I started this game with some reservations: I've never played above Emperor difficulty, and I've never played a game into the modern age. I'm worried about the AIs crushing me with their massive armies and/or culture. But, here goes...

I sent out fogbusters early, and didn't see many early barbs. This meant no Heroic Epic, but my primary goal here is staying alive. By 1540 BC, I had found and claimed the copper, and had figured out how to settle my territory:


Unfortunately, Caesar didn't see my "dibs" marker, and in 1420 BC he took my third city site:


(To add insult to injury, he built the city in the wrong place. I miss Better AI).

The AIs offered open borders in 650 BC, and I set up some trade deals to improve relations further:



In 490 BC, the gods smiled upon Tokugawa, and the Buddhist bloc formed:


Yes, yes, yes! Brothers in faith, brothers in arms against the heathens.

By 400 BC, Caesar had something to trade:


Status check at 10 BC:



By AD 200, I had squeezed in a sixth city, and was already suffering from encroaching Roman culture:


For the next thousand years, I just chugged along. Huyana Capac and Isabella sailed along to make contact, and I realized how lucky I was to have Buddhism on my continent. In 1196, Huyana declared war on Isabella. Status check:




Huyana finished off Isabella in 1334, then promptly converted to Free Religion. This meant I lost my negatives from religion, while keeping the civics bonus. Now, with good AI relations, I just had to avoid looking like a target.

Once I could build caravels, I explored the whole world, looking for an island where I could build another city or two. No such luck: I would have to stick with my six cities.

In the 1700s, I realized I had to get serious about culture. I built cathedrals in my three front-line cities, built the Hermitage in Osaka (the most-pressured city), and cranked up the culture slider.


By 1850, the cultural situation had stabilized, and I was trying to tech my way to real weapons.


I did build a few choppers, but I was a long way from being able to attack the AIs in 2050:



Final analysis: I was lucky to survive this one. I had great luck against the barbs, a single religion on my continent was very helpful for relations, HC's elimination of Isabella removed someone who would have declared on me eventually.

To win this game, I needed to spam out settlers more aggressively and pick up the red dot site. A better research strategy would have helped, too.