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

(+) Yeah! (+)

I had no idea, that's really cool, thanks.

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We decided to launch another offensive against Poland, mainly because they wouldn't give us open borders and we needed to cross their waters to get our navy into position against france, and also because they were weak and we want to make sure they can no longer threaten us. We succeeded in taking 2 of their final 3 cities, one by force and one by surrender.

Meanwhile, we declared war on france as promised, and it has gone well! We took the 2 russian cities they took, razed one while keeping the other (more inwards on the mainland). But man they are sore losers, they straight up nuked the spot where their razed city was as it finished burning! Luckily I think they're out of nuclear warheads, as they lost quite a few when we stormed their cities. Meanwhile, the Shoshone are putting a hurting on their more coastal cities, Lyon is close to falling, and now that their troops on our side of the continent have been eradicated, we have started marching towards their side.

The shoshone appear to have not started the space race yet, as they haven't built a part yet. We successfully got that tier 3 policy and are stockpiling gold like no tomorrow, switching most of our cities to just grow wealth rather than build any further. We're about halfway towards the votes needed for a diplomatic victory (20 out of 39), but stockpiling the gold will allow us to wait and spend it towards whichever victory seems more feasible.
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Bump, I have not forgotten about this, just had a rather busy week. Should have time to hopefully finish up this game this weekend! Turns take foreeeever when you're at war.
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We have taken most of the remaining French cities, while the Shoshone took one, leaving only Paris remaining. However, I think I'm going to seek peace now and leave them alive, because the shoshone will be influential over us in about 24 turns, and 44 turns for Poland. Meanwhile, France had so much culture built up it'll be another 500+ turns before they are influenced, but if we get rid of them then the Shoshone may claim a culture victory.

Meanwhile the Shoshone built their first spaceship part, but we're working on our first and have several thousand gold saved up for when we NEED to build parts.
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Poland has been eliminated by the Shoshone. So I hope France lives! Shoshone have also built 3 boosters, we're working on ours now. We're also just 5 votes off from a diplomatic victory, but I don't know if I have the gold to win it this upcoming session.
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It's gonna be close! We pulled ahead of the Shoshone in the space race, just for them to even it back out. We both just need the final 2 pieces. We're only 1 vote away from Diplomatic victory, but the shoshone are knocking on france's door, trying to eliminate them. I'm ready to declare war on both parties if I need to step in and defend Paris, because if France falls then Shoshone wins. If I can hold off for just 10 more turns I think I can win diplomatically.
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AND WE DID IT! We barely clutched out the diplomatic victory. We weren't going to step in for france until paris lost like half its health in one turn. It became clear they would fall without aid so I stepped in. We also barely got in our world congress vote in time, sa the next turn one of our allied city-states fell to the Shoshone which would have made us 1 vote short. We probably could have still won via science, as we only needed one piece of the ship left and had the money to buy it once we finished researching it in 5 turns, but it was good to get the win regardless.

Gonna take an actual break I think for a little while, and then I'll get started back up with the next civ! Thanks to everyone who's followed thus far, I hope it's been entertaining, and I'll pick back up probably in a week or two!
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Great win

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Exciting victory, very cool. What difficulty are you playing on?

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Emperor difficulty I believe, 6 out of 8
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Ah, thanks. That's the highest I've ever played.

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Figured I should offer my thoughts on arabia, I really like them. I didn't think the extra oil would be so useful but I noticed I had a much bigger air force than I usually do because I had like 30-40 oil. The Bazaar was as good as advertised, but sadly I didn't get much run from the camel archers because by the time I had a few and was in a situation to use them, it was time to upgrade them to cavalry. I even held off for a bit on that but eventually I had to, but I can definitely see why they would be so OP. The ability to just hit and run is so strong, especially since it lets you out-range cities. The land trade routes thing was okay at first but I almost always eventually switch to all-sea trade routes, and this game was no exception. But it was still useful very early in helping us keep a positive income.

BTW, a funny thing about the map, so my wife picked it and kept it secret till the end as I said she would, and I explaiend to her that a lot of the maps in this pack were based on real-life landmasses so I didn't want to know right off the bat. Well, as I kept playing, she kept needling me "You mean you haven't guessed it yet??" and come to find out

She picked continents plus. A RANDOMLY GENERATED map type. So NO, WIFE, I DIDN'T GUESS IT BECAUSE IT'S NOT REAL (which she didn't know, she assumed they were all real). We had a good laugh at that.
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What victories have you achieved?

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hmm that's a good question, I suppose I can go back through the topic and count
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Of my 4 victories thus far, 1 has been science, 1 has been culture, and 2 have been diplomacy.
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Good stuff I was sure thered been a variety. Better than just warmongering every victory like I do

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I hate warmongering. It's so much to micromanage and the game drags so much longer. It's also not the sort of progress I like.

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I don't think I've ever done a warmongering victory. Question about that actually, if you're down to the last 2 civs, and you take the other capital city, do you win? Or do you have to own all the original capitals regardless of who owns them currently?
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You have to own all the original capitals.

I recommend trying out a conquest victory when you get Mongolia or the Huns. Their unique units are awesome. The Keshiks are basically the same as the camel archers and let you form a big horde and run around the map killing everything in your path in true Genghis Khan style.

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I should've tried it on the ottomans tbh because the archipelago style map lent well to all the capitals being accessible by water. Alas.
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Bump
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Bump, going to get back into it soon
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Hm

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Bump, in case this is still happening.

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It is, I don't have much work today so I was actually planning on restarting today!
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In fact, since I can look up the civ list at work, let's go ahead and roll for which civ I'll be playing!

*Rolls*

Oh goodie, those landgrabbing Shoshone! I'm somewhat familiar with them from having played against them so many times, but let's do a dive on them.

Passive: Great Expanse
Cities start with additional territory (Not sure how much); Units gain 15% combat bonus when fighting within its borders

Special units/buildings:
Pathfinder (replaces Scout) - Higher combat strength, but higher production cost; may choose benefit when exploring ruins; upgrades to comp bowman rather than archer when getting a ruins upgrade

Comanche Riders (Replaces Cavalry) - +1 movement, less production cost

I am a big fan of the pathfinder, that seems really cool to pick your benefit. For those unaware, you normally get a random bonus when moving a unit onto a ruins tile, and some of them are really useful, like getting a free tech, or a gold bonus, etc. The Riders are just...better cavalry, which is cool. Not flashy, but certainly useful. And of course the hated passive where their borders just get enormous eventually. I'll be interested to see just how much extra I start with!
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And we have started! And I already know it's the amazon because my wife loves the amazon and was like "hey have you guessed what it is yet???" it's also heavily forested, tons of bananas. Anyway, we already got 3 ruins bonuses, we took the free tech, the upgraded unit, and the culture. We went with Liberty as our first social policy cause man, I need those workers for all these friggin trees. Jungle everywhere. We also discovered Assyria to the south east of us, a good distance away so there's no imminent threat from anything.
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So tbh, something occurred to me as I'm exploring this map...it's not round. Like, it's not a world. There are definite boundaries that i've run into that just...stop. Not sure how I feel about that.

Meanwhile, we're having a lot of trouble with barbarians. We lost a pathfinder and a settler and there seem to be no less than 4 camps around us. We also discovered Polynesia to the southeast of us (Assyria is southwest, not southeast. I directions good.) So we're having to build up some more units to try and get a handle on our borders.
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Yeah I don't think I'm a fan of the set maps, I think I prefer round world. This place is just too small and limited. But I shall press on! 100 turns in and we finally founded our 2nd city, Te-Moak, after recapturing our settler. We wanted to go to the north and get some marble. And holy crap there are SO MANY BARBARIANS. I got the starter honor policy just to get notifications when one pops up and it's like every few turns another encampment pops up.

Also Assyria took over a city state in between us so that's great.

Also we don't get a religion because they all got founded, and I was kinda misled even though I get it would be op, one of the ruins options is "Discover great prophet" so I was like heck yeah! Great Prophet!...it only adds 60 faith to your counter.
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As we end for the night, we discover teh iroquois to the southeast most part of the map. Meanwhile Assyria has declared war on another city-state, but it looks like there's a couple of barbarian encampments that will hopefully slow him down. We continue to deal with many barbarians.
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We're starting to get the barbarians under control, thankfully. We've also finally got some workers working on clearing out this massive jungle so we aren't stuck moving 1 space at a time with all our non-scout units. We also discovered Spain to the west of Polynesia!

Speaking of Polynesia, It hink they and assyria are going to get into it soon, as assyria captured another city-state and polynesia didn't like that.

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

Look at all these ****in trees.
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Was it the Shoshone who people consider worse than having no benefits at all? I remember there's on faction like that.

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I don't see why they would be, the pathfinders alone has been pretty useful. Sadly the comanche riders I don't think will get much run just because of all the trees, but I'm not hating them so far.

Edit: A quick search seems that it might be the Iroquois you're thinking of. SOmeone in this reddit thread flat out said they consider them worse than a blank civ.
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Iroquois are the trash civ, Shoshone are very strong.

Edit: As you mentioned. Their unique unit is negligible, their unique bonus doesn't work as advertised, and their unique building is a downgrade almost always. Shoshone however have a great unit that leads to a good start, extra tiles which leads to a good start (good starts snowball, this is good) a defensive bonus that lets you defend your good start, and a cav unit that's good multiplayer and I've never found relevant single player but oh well.

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Well, this sucks. Songhai has backstabbed us and declared war on us. We aren't immediately under seige and we were just getting our forces built up to send south to curb Assyria (as they're kicking the crap out of Polynesia) but seems we'll have to consolidate and beat this back. I have no idea how big their forces are on account of all the trees blocking my vision.

We also discovered Greece along the east coast.
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It's too late for this game, but plantations for bananas are a bad idea. They're better as just naked tiles for future university bonus, and saves worker time.

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If you can win the war vs Songhai and steal their religion, their Sacred Path should serve you well. If...

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Black_Hydras posted...

It's too late for this game, but plantations for bananas are a bad idea. They're better as just naked tiles for future university bonus, and saves worker time.

I had picked the +1 culture per plantation pantheon so that was my thinking on it, but I'll keep it in mind for the future.
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The battle at our border is going well so far, we are definitely outnumbered but good positioning and superior ranged power, as well as helpful terrain making their advance slow, is helping us out.

https://i.imgur.com/FWUK4w4.png

There are still barbarians popping up all over the place and it's super annoying. I am planning on settling a 3rd city to the west edge where there are some extra luxuries I can trade with others, but I'm trying to get happiness under control first. OUr coffers are also suffering but hopefully that will end soon once we build the east india company. We also went into Commerce as our 2nd planned full policy tree, so getting to the end of that will be helpful for happiness as well. The plan is basically: Increase money, use that to get city-state favor and help our culture/happiness. Meanwhile, we'll take the war to Songhai and take their land, then stabilize the area around and hopefully get this thing off the ground from there.
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Emeraldegg posted...

I had picked the +1 culture per plantation pantheon so that was my thinking on it, but I'll keep it in mind for the future.

Assuming Songhai beat you to Sacred Path other than God-King you really had nothing so can't blame you.

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I don't know if it was songhai but someone def did cause I looked for it when it was my turn and I didn't see it.
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It was songhai, your screenshot showing all their delicious jungle culture shows it. Kill them. Do it.

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Those songhai warmongers had more troops than we thought. They marched a moderate force up to Te-Moak, where we were not quite ready to defend. However, a couple of noble sacrifices by our pathfinders in the area allowed us to get just enough defenses ready to outlast their assault. At the same time, we finally built up enough of a force to attack their frontier city of Taghaza.

The battle was fierce, and in their favor initially as the TREES made our ranged weaponry somewhat ineffective. However, the sheer size of our troops was able to get a foothold and attack the city, which caused them to retreat their forces from te-moak in a feeble attempt to defend. They ended up caught in a pincer, and finally we took Taghaza. Immediately after, we negotiated quite a favorable cease-fire which saw us get enough luxury resources to offset the entire annexing penalty to our happiness. The war is over at last, and we have emerged victorious. Hopefully they will learn their lesson and think twice before attempting to take our land.

Now we must get our empire back on its feet. Our economy is teetering due to the upkeep of our army, while our happiness is on the edge due to population. Getting those 2 things under control will be paramount during this peace time.

https://i.imgur.com/Z4Rkoo5.png
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The world congress has been founded, Greece as its host with 10 votes. Venice is the final civ, we never discovered them as they're in the southeast corner.

We punked Spain big time, they were marching an army to try and sneak attack Moson Kahni, so we bribed Greece to declare war on them and force their units to pull back without a fight. Greece later confirmed via spy that this is what they were doing. I probably could have afforded it but we're starting to get the engine going and I don't want to get involved in a needless war right now, especially since Spain is so far away, further still with all the trees.
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Conflict with Songhai appears imminent again. We received intel that they were plotting against us, and they have begun amassing riflemen near the border of Gao and their former city of Taghaza. We will have to fortify our own defenses (though precautions have already been taken by constructing Citadels on either side of Taghaza facing Gao.)

We sadly missed out on the 2nd tier of the world's fair by just a bit, but other than that, getting the empire self-sufficient is coming along nicely. We are close to the final commerce policy which should have us set on happiness, and we're closing in on our ideology as well. Greece chose Autocracy and Spain chose Order.
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Spain has presented us with an opportunity. They denounced Songhai, so we decided to bribe them with iron to declare war on Songhai, with ourselves following soon after. I feel we have superior might and ranged weaponry (now artillery, while Songhai is stuck with cannons) to take Gao through brute force. War has been declared, and we shall see how those imbeciles like being backstabbed.

The world politics are shaping up as well, we have the everlasting Polynesia vs Assyria, we have Greece vs the Iroquois, and we have Greece vs Spain as the primary conflicts.

We decided to go with Freedom as our ideology, which quickly proved to be a mistake as several other civs went order and put us at -12 unhappiness. We quickly pivoted, which while a regretful mistake, is better to cut our losses and keep our empire happy.

https://i.imgur.com/yNtP9lk.png
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Gao is ours! It was sadly a bloody affair, with many casualties, but their sacrifices shall not be forgotten. I have not yet decided if we will continue the campaign or propose a stoppage to take a breather.
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So a lot happened in a 20 turn session right before bed last night, but I was too tired to recap it. So let me try my best to recall what happened in what order.

So we decided to end the war with Songhai after taking Gao due to them marching more forces than I felt we could handle from Tombouctu. They probably would have been able to retake Gao, and many of our units were damaged. Meanwhile, Assyria and Iroquois made a nice sandwich with Polynesian sauce, with the Iroquois taking their capital of Honolulu and erasing them from the game. And the Iroquois have paid dearly, as Greece (who has had issue with them for some time) finally declared war and...is actually doing very well, they've taken one of their cities and almost took another one (iroquois have been firmly in first score-wise).

However, our friendship with Greece took a hit after they asked us to denounce Spain and I declined. I can't risk conflict with Spain as they are closer and helped us out with Songhai. I also got a glimpse of their forces and it's pretty big. Which leads us back to...

Our peace treaty expired, and we promptly...waited to declare war again until we researched Great War Infantry, as we saw that Songhai had them while we did not. Once we got our units upgraded, THEN we declared war, with spain still helping us. However, we have struggled to break through, as songhai has cities on either side of Tombouctu, along with artillery stationed in the city, that have made it hard to move. We are starting to get a handle on it though, especially since we are close to having planes while they do not. Our Bombers will wreak havoc on their resistance.

Meanwhile, on the empire side, we made a few breakthroughs. The first was finally getting our first order policy, which we went a little exotic instead of happiness and took Skyscrapers, which is 33% off purchasing costs for buildings. That itself is no small discount, but combined with our Commerce policies, which gave us 25% off all purchasing costs (units too), AND Big Ben which we built, which gives another 10% off, and we have a total of 68% off to buy buildings instantly. It's great.

THe other breakthrough we had was remembering that hydro plants exists. For the uninformed, hydro plants give 1 production per tile next to a river. We're in the Amazon. Do the math. Taghaza's production nearly flatout doubled as soon as I built it, and our other cities have benefitted greatly as well (before this, we were near last in productions as it's been hard to come by.) We have been steadily converting our jungles into trading posts which has given our economy quite the boost, we are up to nearly 200 net gold per turn. Our culture has started to ramp up as well, as we have started to dig up artifacts in our area that have helped our tourism. We also got the Uffizi from when we took Gao so that will help as well once we get enough art. All in all, things are shaping up nicely, but we still have a lot of work to do to become one of the big players this game.
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Songhai is no more! We broke through their defenses with artillery and took their city of Tomboucto, while Spain handled their other city of Jenne and promptly razed it to the ground. However, a new threat is looming, as Assyria denounced us and in bright red, it says they currently covet our lands. We must now rush to reposition our troops to the border of Moson Kahni in preparation of this threat. To be honest, I've wanted them gone from day one, when they took over 3 city states in their area. I knew they would keep landgrabbing.
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War with Assyria has begun, they forced my hand after using FOUR great generals to steal territory from my capital. Of course i"ll be the bad guy since I "started" it, but so be it. They shall pay for their greed just as Songhai did.
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