Board 8 > An attempt at beating civ 5 with every civ

(+) Yeah! (+)

Goshute is ours, after a long standoff while we were waiting for reinforcements and additional siege units. Unfortunately, both Bratislava and Milan stand in our way of retaking Barcelona. We have decided to, after allowing for some time to rest and recover our soldiers, to take Milan and burn it to the ground to allow for Barcelona to grow once we retake it. We can't go between them, it would be suicide to do so.

https://i.imgur.com/3KFcXfa.png

It's a good thing I select tithe as one of my beliefs for my religion, as it's been the only thing keeping our economy afloat right now. And even that is reaching its limits as the Ottomans have been busy religiously.
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So it turns out you can't raze city-states, so that sucks. Stuck with a city I don't really want now. For now, I'm going to make it a puppet to help with happiness. Gonna stop here for the night, but when I resume I must decide if I want to end the war now and allow for a breather, or continue on and try to take Barcelona back. I really miss Uluru.

Oh well, guess the decision is made for me. Poland has backstabbed us and declared war, and has an army very close to the Capital. I'll have no choice but to end the Shoshone war, pull my army back and try to fend them off.
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Welp, I'm ending the game. I was gonna play to turn 200 before stopping tonight, and in that time from 187, Poland took the capital, has way too many troops that are a tier ahead of mine. They have it completely swarmed. Poland has earned my eternal ire in any subsequent playthrough. Not gonna waste any more time, that game seemed doomed from the get go tbh. The breaking point was like, I guess I could have stopped the war with the Shoshone after Goshute and had troops more ready to go, but although I saw Poland amassing troops, I thought they were going after America because they asked us to go to war with them. And even if I had my whole meager army, Poland's army was just too massive. So let's start anew! We'll play this new game on the "continents plus" map

Beaten the game:
Germany
Netherlands
Sweden
Poland
Denmark

Failed:
Aztecs (2nd place)
Spain (Last place)

Rolls
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Songhai! Another aggro civ. Let's take a look at their traits:
Passive: River warlords - Gain triple gold from barbarian encampments and pillaging cities. Land units get the "Amphibious" (No penalty when attacking from water) and "war canoe" (embarked units see farther and defend better) promotions.

Units: Mandekalu Cavalry (replaces the knight) - No penalty attacking cities like other mounted units, cheaper production cost, other normal knight traits
Mud Pyramid Mosque (replaces the temple) - No gold upkeep cost, +2 culture, other normal temple benefits

So yeah, guess I'll be hoping for horses early on.
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So now that I've cooled off a bit and thought more about what went wrong, I'd like to just throw my thoughts out here.

I think in general, and it really bit me this game, I have a bad habit of completely ignoring military needs until it's too late. I knew the Shoshone were mad at me the moment I settled Barcelona, and yet I decided to focus on city development the entire time, and I was powerless to stop their attack. I need to be careful that even if I'm not an aggro civ, it doesn't hurt to at least have a token force early on to help ward off enemies. It helps with barbarians too. I also made a big tactical mistake I think, blinded by anger at losing barcelona, in continuing the war after taking Goshute. Even if I was unaware of Poland's impending offensive, it would have been better for me to do a cease fire, then perhaps try to move my units through/around the city states so that I could strike Barcelona more directly without having to take Milan. It really did a number on my forces and I had to spend several turns recovering them, while poland marched on my capital. Taking Milan was itself also a poor move because it was under several civ's protection, so had I lived i"d have been faced with the ramifications of that later on. Now I know at least that I can't raze city-states.

I also tend to look at the scoreboard too much and let it affect my decision making, same with demographics. The score is meaningless, especially early on when the AI has so many advantages. I need to focus purely on my surroundings and not "oh man I need to build a wonder so I can not be last on the scoreboard." There were a couple times that game where I devoted 20+ turns to wonders (namely pyramids) when I might have been better working on the other basic civ needs, like libraries and markets and trade routes.

I also should have made a 3rd settler much earlier. I kept putting off doing that because I was trying to find one more good coastal spot, and by the time I saw it was all taken, the Shoshone had worked their way there and settled it.

Overall, I need to just keep a better head and not get irritated when things don't go like I want. Even the fact that this was basically a land only map tilted me a little bit (though that's mostly because I feel like the game lied about the type of map it would be). Another scenario, was that the water up north was blocked on one side by ice, but the area to the east by the ottomans was blocked by their borders and unexplored, so I spent many turns waiting to get open borders, finally get my trireme over there, and it's...ice. Completely blocked in. Another example, after the Shoshone demanded I stop settling near them, I agreed and fulfilled that promise. So I decided to be cheeky later on, right before they settled goshute in a last ditch effort to stop them from settling it, and I demanded they not settle near us. They got all offended like HOW DARE YOU ASK US TO DO THE SAME THING WE ASKED YOU TO DO. It just pissed them off more, and maybe war could have been avoided if I hadn't OFFENDED them like that. Just little stuff that I need to keep a better eye on and not let it get under my skin so much.

So yeah, that's my analysis of that game and my playing habits in general. Gonna try to do better from now on.
(A side gripe, I wish the extra maps that were DLC had a random option so I didn't know which was played right off the bat, most of them are based on real life landmasses, aka like earth, and I don't wanna know exactly how the landmasses are as I feel it detracts some. I might just do random on the basic maps after this, at least that provides a little more suspense, we'll see.)
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We begin our game next to a river surrounded by wine. Although we almost settled immediately, our warrior discovered the coast east of us, so we decide to hold off a couple turns and get a coastal city. The terrain is mostly plains, so production will be a bit tough to come by early on, but we'll try our best to make it work.

We discover Hong kong to the south, and behold! Uluru again! AND a barbarian encampment! We are currently trying to clear that encampment, and if there's no one else to the west of Uluru I'm thinking the coast near there would be a good spot for a 2nd settlement.

https://i.imgur.com/VXlOf2e.png
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Things are going pretty well so far. There's been plenty of barbarian encampments so we're pretty rich for the early game. We discovered the Aztecs to the southwest of Uluru a decent distance away, and we discovered Indonesia to the west. We got a free worker by clearing out an encampment with a settler that belonged with indonesia, we kept it to ourselves.

We started out the Honor policy tree for the barbarian bonus, but then pivoted to Liberty for the free settler. After marching down to the coast near uluru, settled TIMBUK---I mean, TOMBOUCTU right on some horses in the area. The placement will allow us to eventually have more wine, some marble, and Uluru. There is considerably more productive tiles than Gao has, along with some fish for growth, so I anticipate our 2nd city to grow quite quickly.
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Our 2 cities continue to grow well. We completed the Statue of Zeus, which will certainly come in handy when we decide to get more aggressive (+15% combat bonus when attacking cities). After some overseas exploration, we discover another continent to the southeast where Carthage and Morocco reside. There's also some prime real estate with Lake Victoria (Natural wonder providing +6 food, where were all these wonders last game?) unclaimed, so we decided to buy a settler and get down there before either civ claims it. Thus, the city of Jenne has been founded! Some good resources around it as well. The one downside to my civ right now, is I have no source of iron.

https://i.imgur.com/hIeTxu4.png

Meanwhile, we are somehow good friends with the Aztecs. They asked us for gold and we gave it to them to try and keep them off our backs. Tombouctu is well protected by the natural landscape, so to further facilitate its defense, we generated a great general via social policies and placed a citadel to where it didn't steal Aztec territory, but it put our border right on theirs. Now if they want to attack (not that there are indications but, you know, trying to be proactive) they'll have to march all the way up the left side across 2 rivers. I can set up quite a defensive line in the future.

https://i.imgur.com/VzY0g5h.png
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This world has quite a lot of yet-unsettled land. We send a warrior east past morocco and discover Genghis Khan and the Mongolians. Further north of him is the Zulus.

Meanwhile, Carthage launched an attack on Morocco and ALMOST captured their capital, but a last minute defense boost managed to stave off the attack. Glad carthage wasted that army cause it was a good size.
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We're good friends with the Mongols, but god damn is it annoying when you spend 20 turns on a wonder, that 2 city states want you to build, only for your friend civ to complete it 2 turns before you.
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Those backstabbing Aztec fools. I shouldn't be surprised, they declared war on us under the guise of friendship. Their forces are fierce, but they underestimated the power of money. While I initially only had a pikeman manning the Citadel, soon I had several Cavalry and Archers backing him up, and the Citadel itself proved to be an utterly prescient decision as it's helped us fend off and push back the charge, to the point that now we have the advantage. I will use this time to fortify my army, then I will push ahead and take their city of Tenochtitlan. They will regret double crossing me.

Also Morocco pissed me off by settling an area that i had a settler in on the eastern continent, so I've been forced to move northward between that new city and the Mongol capital. It's not a bad spot, it will allow us more resources and has a diverse tileset, but it's just annoying.
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The Battle of Teotihuacan is proving more difficult than expected. Just as they had trouble laying siege across difficult terrain, we are having the same issue. However, as we end for the night, we are on the verge of a breakthrough with 2 trebuchets in firing position, supported by a force of Mandelaku Cavalry, Pikemen, and Crossbowmen. Even with its now boosted defense, I believe we can finally take the city.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to build up a small force on the Moroccan border, as they have a few units near our border and it's worrisome. There are no red indicators, but there were none with the Aztecs when they backstabbed me, so fool me once...

Economy wise, we were struggling with happiness for a bit, but we have since stabilized and are enjoying game-high approval rates. We finished the Honor tree which has been helping our coffers every time we kill an Aztec. Meanwhile, across the oceans, we discovered the last civilization, Babylon. They and the Zulus are at war. And because we discovered every civ and finished the Printing Press tech, we get to be the first host for the world congress! Our first proposal was going to be embargo Aztecs, but it would upset morocco and I don't want to antagonize them, so we settled for Scholars in Residence (civs get techs 20% faster if someone else has researched it, useful for us as our science is lacking.)
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Our war with the Aztecs has ended for the time being. Just as we were successfully laying siege to Teotihuacan, they decided to offer it as a sign of peace, which is preferable to forcibly taking it over as it loses all sorts of infrastructure that i'd have to rebuild. However, our aggression is not through. We currently have a defensive line blocking the chokepoint next to the Aztec Mountains, until we're ready to continue our offensive. The peace treaty has already expired so we can proceed at any time, but we're taking some time to get our empire under control as we were pretty unhappy for a while, and our treasury was suffering as well. We also want to get some scouts near Indonesia and Mongolia, as we angered Indonesia by preaching to them, while we received intel from Morocco that Mongolia was plotting against us. We just want to be sure that we won't be leaving ourselves vulnerable by continuing our campaign against the Aztecs.

https://i.imgur.com/Qt6Q2yN.png

Here is a picture of our defensive wall. You can see where that enemy crossbowman is, there is a huge mountain range blocking off Teotihuacan from Tenochtitlan. That gives us an advantage until we're ready to go on the offensive.
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azuarc posted...

Even the original game had the space race victory. You had to build the Apollo Project, and then anybody could build spaceship parts. But that's only something you can do in the extreme late game.

Yeah, I never got to that part because I had always defeated all the other nations by that point.

Which is something you should be doing Emerald. Don't know how you manage to show so much restraint, I would be full on warmongering all the time.

At last, those filthy aztecs have been wiped from the earth. After the first Aztec War, we proceeded to launch another attack on their capital, but they decided to placate us by offering up Tlaetlolco. We accepted and waited for the peace treaty to expire again, before launching the final attack on Tenochtitlan. Eventually, after a good deal of resistance, we emerged victorious! Times were very trying, with our unhappiness reaching record highs, but we managed to get it somewhat under control. Our economy is booming, with us bringing in nearly 100 Gold per turn.

Our initial plan was to keep Tlaetlolco and raze the capital due to lolco having a good deal of resources, and having both cities would catapult our unhappiness up again, but upon capturing the capital we realized you can't raze capitals. But I don't want to raze lolco, so we devised another plan. We are keeping both cities, and we ceded the our far east city to Morocco, both as a means to cut down on our population (and therefore unhappiness) and to maybe curry favor with them and keep them off our backs. They even gave us a good haul of resources and gold in exchange, and the only reason I settled there was because they took my original spot anyway. I'm not attached to it.

Our relationships with other civs are degrading some. Indonesia continues to hold our preaching against us for that ONE TIME, and we got intel at some point that they were plotting against us. Meanwhile, several other civs believe that we are expanding too rapidly/worrying about our warmongering. It could be prudent to invest in a navy once I get our empire back under control and stable again. I will likely send the army, once recovered, to guard the indonesian border.

https://i.imgur.com/NNHEZ4I.png
Here's the state of what used to be Aztec territory. We now control the entire bottom half of the western continent.

https://i.imgur.com/Z8G6q0k.png
Taghaza is the territory we ceded over to Morocco. Fes was the area I had planned to settle before they beat me there (specifically on the horses southeast of Fes). Now we don't have to worry about Mongolia wanting our territory, it's Morocco's problem now. Meanwhile, our city of Jenne on the eastern continent is flourishing well, we just have to make sure to build up the army there a bit to protect against any possible moroccan invasion.
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ShatteredElysium posted...

Yeah, I never got to that part because I had always defeated all the other nations by that point.

Which is something you should be doing Emerald. Don't know how you manage to show so much restraint, I would be full on warmongering all the time.

It's not that I'm showing restraint, it's that I just don't have much experience playing war civs, and my natural inclination is to be friends with everyone, so it's a bit out of my comfort zone. However, fear not, for I feel if Indonesia continues to ramp up hostilities then I will be forced to erase them and take sole control of the continent.
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It's as I suspected, Indonesia was ready to swoop in while I was exhausted from the Aztec Wars. They have declared war on us with an army in the plains. Unfortunately for them, I anticipated this. Our cavalry from the previous campaign has recovered, so the plan is for the smaller force that's guarding the capital to hold the line, and we're building more units to support them. Meanwhile, our cavalry will ride up on their flank to take the rear where their ranged units are. This open terrain gives my more nimble units the advantage.

https://i.imgur.com/ZBa04SF.png
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Carthage and Mongolia have teamed up against me and declared war, but...I don't see any soldiers near any of my cities? Jenne, the outpost city, is most in danger just because it's on the same continent, but I'm working on building that army up as well, and I'm going to have one of my cities start on a navy posthaste.

Meanwhile, we have beaten back the Indonesian siege and are approaching their capital of Jakarta. They will rue the day.
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Man, it sucks having most of the world hate you. Carthage ended up marching an army on the city of Jenne, which we were able to defend thanks to the help of a well-placed Citadel. They ALSO sailed a small navy to Tombouctu, that was a threat for a time before we were able to bring our own navy to bear. THEN the Zulus sailed some ships over to our capital of Gao, taking us completely by surprise and getting the city to almost half health before we were able to fight it off.

Regarding the war with Indonesia, we decided last minute not to take their capital city of Jakarta just yet, as we were suffering from happiness issues at the time. Instead, we decided to raze their cities of Medan to the north, and Massakar to the southwest, and ending the war in the process. Doing so was an arduous ordeal, as our happiness momentarily spiked to the point where our cities would have started revolting had it remained there. Luckily, we held out juuuuust long enough to endure it, and now the cities are no more, and Indonesia's potential is cut in half. We cut some of our military, but not a lot, just enough to help get costs under control as we cannot trade with anyone right now due to the seas being hostile. Luckily, our continued exploration of the Liberty policy tree got us some extra happiness, so now we're safe for the time being. Our treasury is starting to suffer however. I would like to make peace with the rest of the world before resuming our campaign against Indonesia.

Surprisingly, Morocco seems to be our friends for real, as they have not joined Carthage and have in fact been plotting against them. Meanwhile, we rescued a Babylonian civilian from some barbarians so we are friends with them now. Overall, our civs potential is very high but we need to get logistics under control before we continue our plan of world domination.
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As we end for the night, we finally convince Carthage and the Zulus to end hostilities. We had already managed to convince Mongolia to, as we had literally 0 interaction with them on the battlefield. Seems like they probably had a deal with Carthage and joined the war out of obligation. While this war was going on, Morocco and Babylon had a little kerfuffle that ended pretty quickly.

Our lack of iron once again is going to be a problem soon, as we're in the era where we're starting to get more advanced ships, and one of them, the Frigate, needs iron to be built/upgraded. Jakarta has iron...but our happiness is on the edge of being unhappy, so now is not a good time to conquer more. I am waiting until we get into ideologies and hopefully I can scrounge up some happiness from those policies.
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At last, some wars that don't involve us are going on. The Zulus declared war on Babylon in a classic land grab, and took their city of Dur-Kurizalgu. They actually almost took their capital of Babylon and I assume almost wiped them from the game (there's still a big fog cloud over the middle of that continent) but it would seem Babylon finally broke the siege as the city health is starting to go back up.

Meanwhile, Morocco finally declared war on Carthage, in act 2 of a very old rivalry. Morocco came out on top, forcing a cease fire while negotiating the ceding of Utique to them. Carthage now sits firmly in last place on the scoreboard and in most demographics, with Babylon not far behind.

Back to our empire, we continued for a while just building up our infrastructure and trying to keep our happiness from going under. Finally, after dedicating considerable resources to it, we became the first to adopt an ideology after building 3 factories, and got 2 free policies and a 3rd regular policy timed just right. We adopted autocracy, which has several tenets that give happiness for military buildings, so after dedicating our cities to building them, our happiness shot up from 0 to 20 and is still rising. I do believe we will lay siege to Indonesia soon now that our empire is happy again. However, we will need to keep an eye on that happiness, as Mongolia has adopted a different ideology and with them being the most cultured civ in the game right now, our public opinion detracts from our happiness. It's going to be important for us to keep our culture up.

Finally, we were finally able to build the east india company in our capital city of Gao, which gave our economy a huge boost in conjunction with dedicating a period of time to reestablishing our trade routes. We're now bringing in 150+ gold per turn, tops in the game.
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The 2nd Indonesia-Songhai War has begun! We have long been prepared for this conflict. We have cast a wide net along the plains separating our territory, backed up by long range artillery for support. Not only is our formation better, but our troops are more numerous. Soon their paltry resistance will fall, and we will be free to pelt Jakarta from afar before conquering it.

https://i.imgur.com/pBUD1bF.png

Meanwhile, both Mongolia and Indonesia have declared war on Babylon. I can only assume the world smells blood and is aiming for the last of their fertile lands for themselves.
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Jakarta is OURS! However, we were forced to end the campaign afterwards due to unforeseen casualties, mainly caused by a small fleet of frigates hidden behind the city. We have plenty of money to refresh our forces, and Indonesia only has one city left. It will only be a matter of time before they are gone for good.
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Emeraldegg posted...

It's not that I'm showing restraint, it's that I just don't have much experience playing war civs, and my natural inclination is to be friends with everyone, so it's a bit out of my comfort zone. However, fear not, for I feel if Indonesia continues to ramp up hostilities then I will be forced to erase them and take sole control of the continent.

I could never stand playing as a warmaker. It just makes the game take so much longer I can't stand it.

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How many cities does Indonesia have left?

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As someone who loves reading playthroughs of EU, this is the best topic on this website. Thanks for sharing!

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Is this game like Risk?

Emeraldegg posted...

Jakarta is OURS! However, we were forced to end the campaign afterwards due to unforeseen casualties, mainly caused by a small fleet of frigates hidden behind the city. We have plenty of money to refresh our forces, and Indonesia only has one city left. It will only be a matter of time before they are gone for good.

Wow somehow I missed this post! I look foolish!


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Don't worry raka, though they may die this game, I'll be sure to try extra hard when i play as them
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I dont like asking twice.

Yesss I'm so looking forward to that.

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Grand Kirby posted...

I could never stand playing as a warmaker. It just makes the game take so much longer I can't stand it.

I think this is also part of it. Once indonesia falls, I'd have to spend time sailing my dudes over there, building up a stronger navy, taking on 2 powerhouses in their own right...by the time I do that, I could be building space parts or buying city state favor more efficiently, etc. Pure domination most of the time feels like a "Oh **** this civ is about to win I have to take them down" backup plan than being a very feasible plan A.
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Babylon has been erased from the game, every other civ besides me attacking them was too much. They were my only real friend left so that's tough. Every other civ is guarded against me now, even Morocco, thanks to their friendship with the Zulus (who I previously denounced). However, we have agreed to go to war against Dido in 10 turns, so perhaps that will repair our friendship.

Meanwhile, Jakarta has come under our complete control finally, I wasted no time spending the bulk of my treasury getting them essential happiness buildings.

Finally, the World's Fair has come and gone, and we won by a landslide! That's a golden age, a free social policy, and double culture for 20 turns. Worth it!

Edit: We finished building the Prora, a great wonder that gives us extra happiness and a free social policy. Combined with the other free policy, we finished the Commerce policy tree! This is huge because the final bonus you get from that tree gives you +2 happiness for each luxury resource. Our happiness just went up from 5 to 21 from the prora, and then up to 46 from the commerce tree. We are happy forever now!
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At last, Indonesia is no more! It took an extra bit of effort because they settled a new city south of their other one, but it was like paper before my army.

Our economy got another big boost because I took an ideology tenet that reduces unit maintenance by 33%, so our income went from 220 to 300. Our culture has also benefited greatly, as we now have the most tourism in the world. Our science is tops in the world. It's looking like we're gonna cruise to the finish here.
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Did a small session tonight, we ran roughshod over Carthage, destroying their cities of Utique and Hippo Regius. We thought the Zulus were going to attack us, as they had a large force on our border of Jenne within Morocco's borders, but they were moving south to join in on the Carthage carnage. Eventually, thanks to our help, they took carthage for themselves...

Which of course we couldn't let stand, carthage was our prey, so we promptly declared war on the Zulus and took it back. Carthage remains with one small city and we remain way out in front.
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Bump, don't think I'll be able to play today but hopefully I can finish this game tomorrow! Then I imagine I will take a short break of a week or 2, since you know it can be a bit repetitive. We shall see.
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It seems you're getting pretty used to wars.

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I must admit it's easier to start wars and give no ****s when my army is the most powerful and the other nations are far enough away that even if they declare war I have plenty of space to deter them.
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Domination is a workable plan A if it's your plan A from the start, it just doesn't seem to fit your preferred play style.

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Turns out I was able to play tonight after all!

We finished the apollo program so the spring to the finish has begun. TBH though, I suspect a diplomatic victory lies in the cards as we have enough money to p much buy out every city state.

The international games were completed and we took 1st by a landslide, so we currently have double tourism, so we're even outpacing mongolia in culture right now.

We used our significant political clout to pass autocracy as the world ideology, so now every other civ is succumbing to our pressure, thanks to that aforementioned double tourism. Mongolia and the Zulus are almost unhappy even!

Not important, but we finally can see the whole map and man, that big cloud over the other continent turned out to be a giant lake and nothing else, so there's like a ring of cities that have been using that lake as a battleground the whole time.

Edit: And morocco just eliminated Carthage's last pitiful city, so remaining are us, Morocco, Mongolia, and the Zulus.
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Well how about that! Songhai RULES THE WORLD!...THROUGH DIPLOMACY! Not how Askia would have done it I'm sure, but a world empire's a world empire right? We amassed 45 out of 40 necessary votes on just the 2nd vote for world leader. Also somehow, that was the first game I've ever been host of the world congress the whole game. So a good game all around!

https://i.imgur.com/raWHven.png

Thoughts on Songhai: I actually really liked them! The passive felt extremely useful for getting out to a lead early game, perhaps it's unfair to compare it to spain's but it feels much better on the basis of it being more consistent. Barbarians happen all the time early game, and 75 gold is nothing to sneeze at then. The 3x gold from pillaging also scales well into the late game, and I really liked the unique military unit.

We'll see about when I start up again, maybe I'll end up starting another game sooner than I thought, or not.
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Emeraldegg posted...

I must admit it's easier to start wars and give no ****s when my army is the most powerful and the other nations are far enough away that even if they declare war I have plenty of space to deter them.

Im pretty sure this has been Americas foreign policy for like 100 years

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I lied! Let's go ahead and start a new game! I'll be playing this game on Archipelago, since it's one of the few basic ones I haven't done yet. BTW here's the updated civ list:

Beaten the game:
Germany
Netherlands
Sweden
Poland
Denmark
Songhai

Failed:
Aztecs (2nd place)
Spain (Last place)

Rolls, hoping for indonesia
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England

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The Ottomans! I know next to nothing about them, so let's take a look!

Passive: All melee naval units have the "Prize ships" promotion (a chance to capture defeated enemy naval units rather than destroying them); pay 1/3 cost for naval maintenance

Special units:
Janissary (replaces the musketman): Heals 50 HP when killing a non-barbarian unit; 25% combat bonus when attacking

Sipahi (replaces the lancer): 1 extra sight and 1 extra movement, pillage tiles at no movement cost

So another military based civ, but this seems pretty well-rounded. Both land and sea specialties should lend well to this map type!
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Could be neat.

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We start off on...an island! Shocking! We start off building a scout and send him north, while sending our warrior to the southwest. Looks like we're at the south pole with the snow and ice, but there's still plenty of habitable land. We find 2 city states on the island so that's nice, as well as the Grand Mesa to the north of Istanbul.

https://i.imgur.com/3W5hPER.png

We decide to start with the tradition social tree, and after getting a worker we decide to hold of on a settler immediately, as I want to explore the immediate area overseas and try to find a more habitable plot of land. Really don't want to settle in the tundra even though there are some luxury resources. The long term growth would be bad.
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So thru 100 turns, it's tough to tell if I'm sucking or if this is normal. There's just not a lot of land to settle. I get that it's islands but most of them are like, 6 hexes or fewer. It's tough to get a read on good spots.

We first discover France to the northeast, then Morocco and russia to the west. Polynesia has started east of France, and Venice is north of Morocco. Babylon is northwest of Venice. We promptly made France mad by settling Edirne on a fertile island near their capital, despite the fact they had 3 cities already. We promised not to settle near them anymore, so hopefully that will placate them. I think we're going to settle the area with the Grand Mesa as soon as we can get our happiness back up. I don't like our capital's location, we've almost pretty much maxed out our farmable/mineable hexes and the rest is just tundra. I have a feeling that the city we found on the Mesa will be our most productive, as Edirne is mostly just jungle that will end up getting cleared out and it's rather small land-wise.

We have managed to capture a barbarian trireme, if we can build up a bit more ships, I am contemplating possibly going after France's capital to get some better land.

https://i.imgur.com/iIgKuQp.png
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In the release version of Civ5, the Ottomans' only bonus was an ability to capture barbarian naval units. It was near-unanimously considered the weakest civ ability in the game.

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You just promised France you would not settle near them again and then promptly say you are eyeing their capital. Devious.

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