don't have time for a full length report but -

I know I can "win" by playing nice with everyone, teching to Internet and then fighting a future tech level war just because all the other victory conditions are turned off and the AI sucks at future tech wars. In the absence of a special scenario like epic 4 I don't consider this path to victory legitimate. Since there are 2 opponents on the starting continent, I will therefore declare the AI to have won the space race and resign if I haven't cleared my starting continent by the time the AIs finish the tech tree.

ok, so - No early rush possible and no elephants. Bad start. I have to research archery but fight off the barbs without much trouble and turbo expand out to 6 cities.



Mao took over a barbarian city in my back yard and founded Taoism there, amusingly enough that city flipped in 350AD and was disbanded.

I research Alphabet and CoL and trade for mathematics. In the meantime I am preparing an army of swords to go with catapults when I get construction. The AIs have founded cities in a weird pattern, this is very bad due to overlapping culture. I decided to take on China here because these cities were better than the NW roman cities.



I declared on China in 515 AD with 12 swords, 6 cats, and some axes and spears. To my annoyance he quickly upgraded to knights and CKNs but somehow I managed to beat these by sheer force of numbers and catapult abuse and take these 3 cities. Unfortunately, I had to return Xian for peace after this as more knights showed up than I could handle with my depleted force. Because of the cultural overlap the captured cities were a terrible return on the huge amount of production sunk into taking them. Hopefully I had damaged China enough to be able to finish him off in renaissance because I was getting out teched badly. Isabella being quickly annihilated by HC on the other continent didn't help with that at all as his tech quickly became runaway and he traded with the other AIs.



I researched up to grenadiers then cannons and went again, first razing Xian then moving on the too distant Chinese homeland. Unfortunately, again shortly after I declared war, Mao had infantry. I was able to take Shanghai with more siege weapon abuse but had to make peace afterwards. Before I had infantry or even riflemen, Mao reached industrialism somehow (he had 3 remaining cities but all of them supercities.)



Crippled by WW and facing tanks with only grenadiers+cannons, the bloodsucking bourgoise capitalists decided to gracefully resign. Even if I could hold my ground the other AIs were much too far ahead. The main reason for this lost game was that I didn't get enough return for my heavy sword/cat attack and as a result fell too far behind in tech. It was unfortunate (or evil scenario design possibly) that the AI capitals started very distant and they ended up colonizing the north in such a haphazard manner.

Hello, guys.

Well, I haven't played deity yet on any game, so this was a survival attempt. And a failed one. The report is also poor. If you still want to see it, please check here.

C'ya next event
FBelintani

I’ll get this out of the way now, I fully expect to get horribly killed by the AI as soon as one of them declares war. I also suspect that I’ll try to expand too quickly like I did in Epic 4 and cripple my economy.

I hope not to get run over by the barbarians in the 16th century this time though.

Pre-game thoughts

I’m thinking the main problem here will be the land grab, if the AI is situated close to us, then their free settler/archer can immediately grab the best city sites close to us. After that, they can also produce additional settlers much faster than us and could easily have 4 cities up by the time I’m building my first. I have no real solution to overcome this so I guess I’ll just pray.

Because I think the player is totally doomed if the AI makes a serious war declaration before say….2000 AD (maybe 2050 in my case), I feel that trying to build a serious military before the modern era, will be a waste of time/shields etc. Yes the cardboard cut-out defence will be employed with perhaps one exception for my capital. I’ll do my best to simply tech and expand as best as I can and see how it goes.

Diplomatically I will play the beggar, desperately trying to avoid being kicked and giving my oppressors anything they want (assuming I ever get anything they want).


So it begins...



Immediately I'll head to archery first to try and secure my cities and I'm too scared of the barbarians to go worker first on Deity.

I meet Rome and decline the salad

Only manage to pop one hut and it gives me another warrior, oh well.

The first Barb warrior appears in 3250 BC and he wanders off.



A couple of Barb cities spring up next to me

Get Osaka founded at a fairly early date of 2140 BC



Tokyo is founded a bit further north of Osaka to grab Copper and Deer.

Meet up with Mao in 985 BC and it appears both my neighbours are Buddhist. So it looks like I'll need to get Buddhism into my lands ASAP!

And in 400 BC it spreads to Kyoto.



I found Edo in the tundra to the north to grab the silver/furs/fish and my expansion is done for now. I simply can't do anything against the Barb cities militarily right now.

JC quickly surrounds me with cities (one from Mao too) and takes the Barb cities as well.

Demographics at 1 AD



After running a Prophet specialist at Kyoto I pop my first great person and Mencius discovers CoL for me in 140 AD.

Fortunately neither of my neighbours actually have it yet, so I'm able to trade CoL for a few techs + some gold.

I meet Huayna in 290 AD and sell him Meditation for some gold.

The Romans settle on my northern borders. Setia looks doomed with only 1 longbow defending vs my culture.



Now at this point I have a good chance of a quick flip, Setia has no culture at all and only one defender, however I see 2 longbows on their way through my land to reinforce.

So I cancel open borders and JC drops to cautious.

In 815 AD I breath a sigh of relief.



I decide to keep Setia for the extra few commerce it will garner from the sea. I immediately resign open borders with Jules.

Pop my 1st great scientist in 905 AD and grab an academy.

Meet the last of my oppressors in 920 AD, as pouty pants makes her entrance.

I finally get access to Samurai in 965 AD and for an all too brief period, I'm on a level military tech field.

In 1178 AD I hear the war horns (actually I don't because I have no sound) and both Huayna and Mao declare on....Spain!

Knowing my research is complete pants at this point, I resolve to produce as many great scientists as possible, Kyoto runs multiple specialists and I adopt Pacifism (which works nicely with my cardboard cut-out defences).

Mao asks for my assistance in wiping out the Spanish, I agree then continue as normal.

In 1364 AD it appears that my allies have been busy.



And like that, the person who everyone hated is gone, am I next I wonder...

With the AI's discovering Liberalism far earlier than me, their culture starts to encroach on my cities and I'm forced to settle a couple of Artists.
Eventually the dire cultural situation forces me to leave Bureaucracy for free speech which hurts my science effort but steadies the borders.

I adopt Representation and Emancipation when Democracy is done for a nice shared Civics bonus with JC.

In 1860 AD Jules offers me a deal I can't refuse.



And I feel relatively secure for the first time in the game, with Mao pleased (was friendly before going to Free Religion) and Huayna on another continent.

With Happiness bieng a problem, this was a welcome boost!



I enter the modern era in 1886 AD

Huayna asks me to adopt Hereditary rule and I decline which drops him to cautious.

At this point I give in to my inner nagging and settle Satsuma right on my eastern border.



I think I should've settled this earlier, this was at its finest.

Industrialism reveals 2 sources of Aluminium closeby. In Roman lands...



In 2010 AD I notice the Internet is still up for grabs and go for it



Note how I'm researching Theology?

At this point, I turn off research and run maximum culture to grab a few extra tiles.

In 2042 AD I trigger a golden age to end the game with.

And in 2043 I build the Internet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



And thus it pops all the techs on the tech tree I had missing, about 7 or so.

Pity it didn't pop all the Future Techs that the AI surely has.

Financial Advisor in 2050 AD



And demographics...



Endgame overview



And score



So I survived to 2050 AD! Only to be compared to Louis the XVI.


I was pleased to get to the end of this game, but most of the credit goes to JC for agreeing to a defensive pact and deterring the others from picking on me. Mind you thats the least he could've done after taking the Barb cities next to me before I could get catapults.

The most iffy moments where when I cancelled Open Borders with JC and had -3 from border tensions, he could easily have declared war then, but I was fortunate. Later on, Huayna wasn't too happy with me and without the shared military struggle bonus vs Spain, he might've declared.

I tried to cut the AI off from the eastern side of my land, but they simply sailed past.

While I felt a bit unlucky with Barb settlements in the early game, I felt EXTREMELY lucky with not having to fight a single non-Barbarian unit.

It was strange not being the focus of so many demands this game, and its nice when the AI gifts you techs! Notable gifted techs were Meditation (which I later traded for gold!), Liberalism and Artillery.

One last thing to note was that I actually grabbed more land than Spain did and my GNP was higher before Izzy got roughed up.

Was a fun game

alright there was a similar post made nearly half a year ago and i believe its time to start this again as times change.

they need people for an alliance council which hopefully will prevent bullshit like the current ''666'' situation going on in the alliance forums.

i volunteer for this as i have loads of time on my hands :P

anyone else?

I was cut down like a dog in 1437 AD, unfortunately.

Things actually went very well up til around 1400 AD. I had a nice little kingdom of 4 decent cities. Me, Mao and Caesar were all Buddhist Buddies. Relations were Pleased all round, trade was flowing, it was great.

However the message I got in 140 AD was a warning of things to come: The Spanish had been destroyed! I hadnt even met them, nor their conqueror. So now I knew there was some bloated beast of a Civ out there in the fog...

Around 1400 AD the first Inca boats arrived at our shores. The beginning of the end really. Hindu Huayana was not interested in our words of friendship, being instantly annoyed. We remained at peace for some 30 years as he gathered his hordes of cavalry and rifles, and built up his navy. I gifted him everything possible, almost sobbing as I begged him, just let me last til 2050 AD! Please!

As if. His vast armies landed on our northern shores. Brave Japanese axemen (yes axemen... sigh) were annihilated by storms of bullets. Cities were burnt to the ground and the people enslaved. Our last stand at Osaka managed to kill 2 cavalry before the rest overwhelmed the last brave defenders, and the name of Japan passed into the history books.

This is quite possibly the most fun game of Civ I ever had. I usually coast through Prince or maybe try Monarch if Im feeling adventurous. But never had I even contemplated trying Deity. Thanks guys for giving me the courage to try this, and giving me a great game.

Another try at Deity, another loss . My summary can be found here.

Darrell

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.

A brand new warlords game is opening today. Here is the link to the game details but here is some info to get you started ...

Scenario: With the UN electing a new Secretary General recently, this game brings you the chance to influence real world actions. You play as Wang Kon against 5 opponents (the five permanent members of the Security Counsel - China, France, Russia, England and the US).

This is a scored event with your aim being victory. However, bonus / malus points are available.

Scoring:

1. Victory: +100 pts
   
2. Relationship Modifiers (turn after end): +1 pt per net modifier
   
3. You kill (or arrange for someone else to kill) an AI: -20 pts per AI
   
4. Bonus Points for Diplomatic Victory (based on winning election):
   • You vote for yourself and have more than 31% of the votes: +20 pts
     
   • You vote for yourself and have less than 31% of the votes: +50 pts
     
   • You abstain from the vote: +70 pts
     
   • You vote for opponent: +90 pts
     

• no phony wars - if you get involved in a war (declaration, defensive pact, etc), you must send troops to the front line
  
• no 'mickey mouse' gifting of cities (do I really need to include this variant rule?)
  

Epic 10 - Rising Sun

This has the potential to be a very long game ... or a very short one. Small continents map, deity difficulty, only conquest victory is enabled.

The captial is already founded - it has pigs and cows. Obviously we want animal husbandry here early. I also would like archery (deity barbs are rather unfriendly) so I begin with a worker and hunting.

Some very nice hut pops!



Both techs are great for us. We research animal husbandry and hook up our two resources. Two warriors and two archers were built after the worker to fog-bust and fight the barbs, then I started a settler. Research went into mining and then bronze working, looking for copper and to enable slavery. We met the two AIs on our continent: Julius Caesar and Mao Zedong. Our continent is highly Organised.

Copper was found, and our first settler went to a fairly obvious spot.



It has grassland copper, silver for our rather low happy cap, deer, and can work Osaka's pigs for a while to slave in an obelisk and granary.

So I'd just got my first city up. Looking back at the replay files, it would appear that Mao (founder of confucianism) had just founded his seventh. Unfortunately for him, he had founded most of them on JC's borders. Not appreciating this, the Romans initiated the first and only Sino campaign in 1600 BC.



Our second city went east of Kyoto, claiming corn and sheep. No happy resources, but with food and a couple of hills it would be OK.



Julius, bristling with Praetorians and already having taken two chinese cities, decided that my measly army of a handful of axemen could help him.



OK Caesar, I'll see what I can do! That would put him up to pleased and give me 2 points of mutual struggle which lasted the entire game.

Our third settler goes north to claim the furs. A rather bad city, but we desperately need the happy resource.



Julius was having fun in the hay, having taken out the whole of china by 700 BC. Thirteen cities by 700 BC? Can anyone say runaway AI? With the war now over, I faced a race with him to take out the two barbarian cities on my borders.

But first, a bit of worker stealing. What, worker stealing? From who? The barbs of course! My first two warriors had gotten woodsman II promotions, and they managed to steal six workers from the barbs.



Osaka began great library but did not get anywhere close to completing it. Meanwhile, JC had sent me a missionary so I converted to confucianism.



That, combined with resource trading, set me on the way to being friendly. Having finished using the barbs for worker training, I captured two of their cities.



Bantu would become globe theatre city. Two more settlers produced to pick up some spots before JC gets them all. I purposely didn't settle on JC's borders until friendly.




We became friendly with JC in 830AD, so I signed a defensive pact with him. Meanwhile some overseas AIs had met us, Isabella and Huayna Capac. Neither required any of my techs unfortunately.



I produced 4 scientists from Kyoto and later Tokyo (national epic city) who made an academy and lightbulbed education, printing press and scientific method. After that I concentrated on merchants for the trade missions. One artist was made who began a golden age later on. Building Oxford in Kyoto helped my science rate a lot.

Julius was getting restless, and declared on spain in the thirteenth century.



However, despite JC having cannon, rifles and cavalry to Izzy's muskets and longbows, he could not hold on to any cities and peace was declared shortly. I resigned the defensive pact.

Izzy was the most behind of the AIs, so she was an obvious first target. She had most of the shrines too. My research rate was getting better, but I was only able to make one trade the whole game: Steel to Izzy for something I forget.

Once I had rifling, astro and steel I went to theocracy and nationalism and built up an army. I wasn't quite ready, but HC declared on Izzy and I knew I had to get some troops over there or HC would take all the cities.

Power graph at the time, note Izzy's line has dropped after losing troops to HC (who has tanks).



Now we have biology, resourceless cites become useful production centres. Found Nara.



The invasion force consists of 16 riflemen, 16 grenadiers and 10 cannon (not enough cannon!). Caesar has stealth bombers at this time BTW. With tech and power parity, Izzy did not last long. She got machine gunners during the war bud did not have time to build enough to worry me. I captured the cities closest to HC first, then moved on the eastern ones. Some cities were noticably weakened by HC's artillery and tanks. Barcelona was a particularly nice catch, containing Versailles, Christian Shrine, Buddhist Shrine, Hanging Gardens, Sistine Chapel, Kremlin and Spiral Minaret. In addition to mundane banks, obsevatory etc. It would get Wall Street.



The fast speed at which I had to capture the cities and lack of cannon meant that I lost quite a lot of troops, in fact most of my invasion force was gone. That's OK though because I resigned the DP with Caesar and didn't plan on starting another war until I finished the tech tree. Madrid built my ironworks and heroic epic, and was able to build 2-turn modern armour later in the game.

So some fairly boring turns later I had all the techs I wanted and turned off science. I was going to build the internet because I thought the AIs avoided that wonder, but JC built it ages ago. Fortunately I realised this before I got fibre optics and so did not obsolete the Kremlin.

Universal Suffrage + Kremlin bought be a lot of modern armour and stealth bombers. Nationalism drafted me some mech infantry. I decided not to use nukes in this game, as buying nukes is rather unfair when there is a bug which stops vanilla AI ever launching their own.

In 1943 AD, war was declared on the Incans.

Our army consists of 34 modern armour, 14 mechs, 19 artillery, 32 battleships, 10 gunships, 21 stealth bombers and 15 jet fighters. Number of battleships is key here to prevent invasions, letting most of my troops be on the Spanish continent to attack.



Note that JC and HC had stopped building troops. Obviously it's very important for them to keep troop maintenence under control to quickly research those future techs!

Most important thing to do in modern war is make sure that AI artillery cannot hit any of your cities or troops. If your city is on a culture border you need gunships in that city.



Gunship has 4 movement points, so use 1 to go into enemy territory. Second one to pillage a tile's improvement, then a third to pillage the railroad and a fourth to retreat back to the city. If it's a cottage you need to get rid of then you will need 2 or 3 gunships per tile.

After declaring, you don't really want to do anything except ensure your jets are set to intercept. Maybe you can bomb their oil supplies if in range. You don't really want to stealth bomb their cities because they will have bunkers - best to wait until the stacks come into the open. On the first turn of war, HC landed two stacks outside Cordoba.



Not so impressive, HC. Clever that your split your forces up, but after some stealth bombing I don't think I lost a unit cleaning those stacks up. Revolt to police state to eliminate war weariness (every city had a jail, and I had mount rushmore).

More impressive is the fleet he has sent to my mainland.



I had enough bombers and battleships to sink the carrier stack and the transport stack with the light defence, but had to let the transport stack with lots of defence through. Being more used to warlords, it was really annoying playing vanilla not being able to see how many units were in each stack. Also the interface for selecting your own troops in big stacks is far better in warlords. The stack turned out to be reasonably big, but I had some artillery and a mop up force on my mainland. Coupled with airlifting a mech from each city into the city they landed outside and drafting 3 more mechs, we don't suffer too badly and clean the stack up. Used up most of my artillery though because my stealth bombers were in use elsewhere.



Another HC stack of indefinite size appears, but cannot attack after I pillaged the railroads. Strangely it has no modern armour or gunships. They are now sitting ducks and die after a good stealth bombing.

So after his attacking stacks are gone, HC is pretty much dead. The war is won at home, not in foreign battlefields.



His artillery is gone and never hit me, he's basically just got some mechs and planes held up in each city, unwilling to come out. It's time to invade enemy territory!

Some turns later, he's an ex-incan. Revolt back to universal suffrage.



Our new territories:



All but 3 of my stealth bombers got shot down, so we took a bit of a power hit.



Now to figure out if I can win by 2050 AD for a big victory, or settle for a small one. I figure that the roman war, if it were to be successful, would take a maximum of 30 turns, probably less. So I decide just to build (and buy) military until 2020 AD and see what the power graph looks like then. I doubt I'd actually lose all my cities in 30 turns, so I'll probably declare whatever happens at that date. Let's see what Caesar is up to ...



Ah, future tech 35, nice . All of his cities are building wealth, no new troops built for a long time. So in 2018 AD, let's check the power graph.



Not too bad, I think I have a chance here. Sorry old buddy, you protected me for the whole game but that nasty Sullla says I can only win if I wipe you out.



My army consists of:

21 Jets
77 Stealth Bombers
14 Artillery
87 Modern Armour
91 Mechs
16 Gunships
64 Battleships

Now let's see the Roman colours. JC sent two naval stacks at Satsuma, both pathetically defended and die to my battleships. Here is one of them:



A small stack of about 10 units appeared at Kagoshima, but the main force came to Illinois. There were no roman missions to the incan/spanish continent, where I had a sizeable force waiting so I had to spend every turn airlifting as many troops back to the home continent as possible.



Now my problem was that I couldn't see where the main artillery stack is. From the military advisor I could see that he had over 50 floating about. Since we're playing vanilla CIV, this is a bit of a lottery. I bombed+killed two of those three stacks, but unfortunately the one I left happened to have over 25 artillery in it .

Cue a 30 minute IBT. After coming back from having my tea, Illinois was well defended and held, but I lost a fair few modern armour which annoyingly often defend ahead of mechs. Most of my MAs were promoted to Drill 2. Next turn I wiped out the last stack, which incredibly still had cavalry in it. Over 100000 in the bank and you can't afford to upgrade?

Power graph update 3 turns into the war:



His artillery and modern armour is gone, begin the invasion! When I say invasion, I actually mean mop-up. I overestimated the length of the war, cleaning up 12 turns later for a conquest win in 2033AD.




Though it's clear that the vanilla game is not built to deal with this number of troops. I would much rather play conquest-only games in warlords for the far superior interface, and the fact that the AIs can nuke.

Final power graph:


GNP:


Production:


Caesar declaring on Mao was good for me in some ways. It stopped him declaring on me, gave him a shrine and religion that he wanted to spread to me, and also when I joined it put me up to pleased from the mutual struggle. On the downside I could not trade until JC got optics because he wouldn't trade with me not knowing anyone else. By the time he got optics, I had nothing to offer him.

I don't think I teched that well. I failed to realise that I had no trade routes for most of the BC years, because 2 coastal barb cities were blocking the coastal ones. I should have built a road to rome much earlier.

Thanks for a very fun game! One of the most enjoyable I've ever played. BIG Victory, baby .

Wiped out by the Romans in 1448AD.

I managed to found three towns - one for copper to the west, one for silver to the north and one to the south for health reasons. Then I jackaled along behind the Chinaman in an early war with the Romans and captured two more, one to the west and one to the north.

And that was the beginning of the end. I had overtrained my military and exceeded a sensible expenditure for troops at the current level of development and the burden of two more towns put the economy in a tailspin. I suffered the indignity of a General Strike, research went to 0% and then no more than 10% for a very long time and by the time the economy had recovered I was researching Civil Service while the Chinese had researched Liberalism.

Rome remained relatively behind hand in research all this time but even so when at last Julius came after me to repay me for becoming a running dog of the Chinese he came with knights for pillaging the countryside, and grenadiers and cannon and I was still working on Engineering.

Let's just say the last 100 years were not a pretty sight. Julius rolled me up into the far NE corner of the continent, taking the metals as he did so, leaving me with longbows to defend against cannon and grenadiers.

Never even got close to getting off the rock and visiting the other continent, the one solace I enjoyed was that Isabella took it on the chin long before Julius got to me. I only know this from rumor, however, as I never met the lady.

It was an interesting battle against the barbarians and the early Roman war, trying to pick my spots, and "shape the battlefield" to my advantage. Picking up after the economic debacle was a challenge. I thought I had worked my way past the worst, but a revengeful Julius put an end to that delusion!