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

(+) Yeah! (+)

Assyria, for all their military might, seem to lack an understanding in basic strategy. We made allies of our neighboring city-state Kyzyl, so rather than focus all their power on one front, they split up their forces to try and hit both places at once. They've already made no headway against us and in fact have lost a bit of ground while we've yet to take any casualties, and the token force they sent to Kyzyl is already under heavy bombardment. This will only hasten their demise, though it shall still be long as they have much land.

Meanwhile, Greece is far and away the favorite to land a diplomatic victory, though we're still many turns from that as they're still quite a few votes short. But I'll have to stockpile gold again to keep them from having too many city-states; they're already fighting with us over a few key ones.
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Finally, some progress in this war. 5 Citadels is a lot to plow through, but finally we broke the lines and managed to take their city of Habab, puppeting it with the sole purpose of using it as a station for our bombers to keep close to our advance.

Assyria shifted more of its forces towards Kyzyl, and while they did take some hits, ultimately Kyzyl repelled them with our help. We then took advantage of the elimination of Assyrian resistance in the area to liberate Bogota, which had been under their control from near the start of the game. Another city state ally for us, and Assyria's forces are starting to lull a bit (though the demographics still show them as having largest army.) This war isn't over by a long shot, the next target is going to be a bit tougher as there's some mines and rough terrain directly in our way, but we will press onwards! If we can take this city, their capital will be within reach.
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The largest army means nothing when all they do is die to your superior tactics and ranged might. On another note, I think Greece is my least favourite AI to play against; Alexander always does alarmingly well.

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Greece def one of the major players left, he took another iroquois city and razed it to the ground in that session as well.
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I accidentally looked at this topic yesterday and now I've won a 2021 Cultural Victory as Japan.

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Congrats, now you get an unread dot on the page whenever someone posts here, enjoy
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Bump, had a busy few days
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I think Alexander is the best NPC in the game, yeah.

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After a rather lengthy battle, the Assyrian city of Dur-Sharrukin is ours! It is still under seige but only from a single ranged unit that will be wiped out, it is ours for good. I am slightly worried as assyria has 2 nuclear weapons, but they won't let me stop war, so I suppose the only recourse is to take a moment to heal up then press onward to their capital of Assur.
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And now Assur has fallen! Assyria still has quite a few cities to the south along the coast, but there is no doubt their empire has been severely crippled. They appear to be going down with the ship, as they still will not have peace. Very well then, for their land grabbing they shall pay the ultimate price.

In other news, the space race has begun! I think that's probably gonna be our only way to win at this point, as Greece has a hard time limit on a diplomatic victory, and it would take too long to go conquest that way. Culture is also pretty much out of reach even though I have close to the most tourism. There's just not enough time to catch up.
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Wow, Assyria is a sore loser. They straight up just nuked their own former capital. There can be no peace now until their blight is wiped from the land.
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Greece has eliminated Venice from the game, but Spain is taking it to Greece, having captured a city and currently razing it to the ground, and they don't look done yet. Hopefully they will fight enough to let me have enough time to finish the spaceship. We've started building our 1st part. Greece is only 7 votes away from world leader. Gonna be a close one.

Also we did make peace with Assyria because they offered us pearls and a whopping 70 gold per turn. Our forces remaining from the nuclear attack were also in tatters, so we had no choice. We are gearing for a 2nd attack though, as assyria denounced us and they covet our lands.

https://i.imgur.com/H3GSsKE.png

Meanwhile the Iroquois hate us for...reasons? They can get over it.
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Greece has completely turned the tides of their war with Spain and have them down to 3 cities. So hopefully we can end this game before they turn on us. Maybe they'll go after the iroquois instead.
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LOL greece is at a whopping -81(!) happiness from ideology for a net of -27. That might be the lowest I've ever seen. Seems their empire might be collapsing on itself
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And it's over! The Shoshone are VICTORIOUS! It actually wasn't as close as I thought, we put a major dent in Greece's diplo chances, and we built all the parts fairly quickly. It was squirrely there for a while but we pulled it out. I'll roll the next civ later!

As for the shoshone, it's kinda tough to rate them hoenstly cause I didn't get a single mounted unit the whole game. The extra territory was useful I guess, the pathfinders ruled. Solid civ overall, just sad I couldn't use them to the fullest.

Also **** the Amazon.
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Beaten the game:
Ottomans
Germany
Netherlands
Sweden
Poland
Denmark
Songhai
Arabia
Shoshone

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

Let's roll! Rolls

Et tu, brute? (not that caesar) AUGUSTUS CAESAR of ROME!
You know, I might actually start using the civipedia page because reading about dudes histories is interesting. In case anyone cared and/or didn't know this already, this caesar was apparently the one who hunted down Brutus and Cassius for their murder of Julius Caesar. ANYWAY

Emprie ability: The Glory of Rome - +25% production when constructing buildings that already exist in the capital

Unique units:
Legion (replaces the swordsman) - Extra strength over Swordsman, can build roads and forts
Ballista (replaces the catapult) - Extra strength

...eh? Nothing here def seems gamebreaking, although the worker/swordsmen are interesting for sure. They definitely seem like a "conquer everything early game" type of civ, which...is like my least preferred type as I believe I've said before, but we'll see how it goes! I don't know what map I'm playing yet.
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So something I learned, apparently picking one of the explorers maps that are based on real life, scale games down for players rather than scale the landmasses up. My wife picked japanese mainland and rather than scale up the land, it scaled the game down to 4 players automatically. So I've decided I'm just gonna continents plus mostly from now on, maybe mix it up every so often.

Anyway, we start off near the coast in a heavy marsh and desert area. Quite a varied pick of luxury resources to start: Copper, Cotton, and Marble (which we settled on). Our proximity to a barbarian camp allowed us to pick it off with the city itself. We appear to be near the top of the map as there is tundra to the north of us, so we're exploring south for now. We got our pantheon, we decided to go with Earth Mother, which is faith for every Copper, Iron, and Salt (we will have at least 3 copper eventually). We also started on the liberty path, as there's a solid chunk of land to the southwest of Rome that would make for an ideal city.

https://i.imgur.com/KnCghMQ.png
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Alright, through our first 100 turns things are actually shaping up quite well! We founded a religion, founded the city of Antium, built 3 world wonders, and are starting to explore overseas finally. It doesn't look like I'll much be able to use ballistas as we appear to be the only civ on this continent, but maybe we'll have explored enough by the time we get the Legions. A smaller continent south of us has 3 city states, 2 of whom we've befriended thanks to taking out a camp, and another seeming larger continent to the southeast that we're sailing around now.
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So, I've been thinking it over, and I'm gonna relent a little bit here. Part of the reason for this project was to expand my experience and not just do the same boring experience over and over again. I was put off by the prospect of anything other than standard 8 player civ with some land and some sea, but I think I should give it a chance. So I'm going to be starting over and actually doing the Japanese Mainland map with Greece, 4 players and all. Maybe it won't give me the full greek experience, but it wouldn't be the first time I didn't get the full civ experience, and it'll be different if nothing else. So I'll get to that likely tonight at some point, as long as there are no serious objections. I know 100 turns sounds like a lot but as the civ vet will know, the first turns always go by really quick so I didn't dump too much time into this current map.
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Alright so, we start off in some rather narrow terrain, surrounded by marshes and woods, with some water below us. We decide to settle right where we started as that'll give us some water maneuverability should these bodies of water lead somewhere. There's quite a bit of luxuries around us, we already have a spot picked out for our 2nd settlement when we get our settler. We went with +1 culture for every plantation, as we have citrus and sugar near us.

Indonesia is one of the other 3 civs, to the far west of us.

https://i.imgur.com/rvoI7Vf.png
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Oh boy, the 2nd of 3 other civs is none other than greedy France, who is on the opposite side of me. I settled my 2nd and 3rd cities of Antium and Cumae, both of which have upset the neighbors, though france more so. Gonna have to build an army in a hurry.
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I feel war with France is imminent. They initially marched their army towards Cumae, but have marched around and are now sending some units near Rome. I am trying to build my army to combat them as best I can for when it happens.

Economy-wise, we're starting to find our footing a bit, having finally gotten our trade routes up. We also established Protestantism with Tithe being the main bonus, so hopefully as that takes hold we will be able to rake in a bit more money.
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Bump, I had plannedon playing tonight but other stuff got in the way, def will get some time in tomorrow
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Though our forces are half the size of the French army, we declared war as we felt we had no choice, lest they continue marching on Rome. We saw a moment where their forces were spread out, and took that chance to launch a pre-emptive strike in an attempt to gain a momentary advantage. Things are very much in the balance right now, as their forces are surrounding Cumae, but we destroyed the forces around Rome, so hopefully our ranged reinforcements will be able to stave off their numerous trebuchets enough to beat back their invasion. Their casualties are greater than ours so far, unit preservation will be key. None of our 3 cities are capable of training new units in a timely manner. We will have to make what we have last, for the time being.

https://i.imgur.com/Kj0XoMa.png
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We seem to have broken the siege! Their army has shrunk significantly, while ours has remained the same, if not stronger now that we have researched Steel. France settled another city right next to Rome, so destroying that will be of utmost importance. Then, if our forces are still strong, we shall march towards Paris and show them true Roman might!

Also, Indonesia discovered all the civs, the last civ in the game was the Ottomans, very far to the north of France.
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The nerve of these french ingrates! We took that outpost city of Marseille (and are razing it), and they want to lay down arms and for us to give them not only that city back, but our 2 non-rome cities! Their hubris is matched only by their ineptitude in combat. Their city of Tours, which is directly to the east of Cumae, will be next.
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Retag

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Blast, curse those french. They may not be smart but they're tenacious. They spent the time we used taking Marseille and Tours to rebuild an army, this time of almost entirely crossbowmen. We are taking more casualties than before, but we constructed a 2nd citadel in the direct path of their invasion, so I'm confident we can hold the line once again.

The Ottomans, meanwhile, informed us that Indonesia is plotting against us, so I have a trireme monitoring their units carefully. A war with them right now would be very problematic, as France still believes they hold the advantage and, thus, will not accept a surrender unless it is to our detriment. No such thing will happen.
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Well this is unsettling. Indonesia has come to us with intel that says the Ottomans have launched a sneak attack against Rome by way of the sea. Though it will take some time for them to reach us, we have not fortified Rome at all, as this was completely unexpected. We have just discovered Astronomy, so we will need to build some caravels to ready our waters at once.

Meanwhile, the war against France has stalled a bit, mainly because we are constructing some trebuchets to assist us in taking down their next city. The terrain is also very rough, full of hills and forests, cut in half by rivers. Interference from their city state ally of Mbanza Kongo is not helping matters. France seems content to sit their Musketeer units in their territory, so we will use this lull to further prepare a force to punch through their lines.
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We were finally able to negotiate peace with France, no strings attached. It was obvious the terrain, combined with their musketeer frontline, was going to be difficult to breach. However, we shall maintain the borders vigilantly, as the French are never one to quit for very long.

Luckily however, though we did catch a glimpse of an Ottoman ship, it was only one, and our now expanded navy have scouted the immediate area and have not seen any sign of a fleet. It seems we are safe for now.

Now that we are in a time of peace, we've been getting our cities caught up on some buildings they were lacking, as well as national wonders like the East India Company, and Oxford University. Our workers are trying to get our food production ramped up, as all of our cities have sort of stalled in terms of rapid growth. We need more people if we want to start producing great people.

Finally, we were able to find the resources to produce a settler, and they sailed to a large unclaimed continent below the Indonesians, and therefore, the city of Neapolis has been founded! Rich in resources like iron and whales, and diverse in land types, this city should prove quite prosperous in time.
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Bump, probably won't get time to play again till wednesday
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We are enjoying a time of relative peace at the moment, which has done wonders for our empire's infrastructure. We're starting to be able to get some city-states on our side, and our production and economy are starting to blossom as well. Our borders with France remain somewhat tense, but for now they seem to be the friendliest to us of the other civs.

We were the 2nd to get an ideology, so we took Freedom, but France has taken autocracy and Ottomans have taken Order, so our pitiable culture is causing some unrest. Luckily however, we are awash with luxuries that are offsetting that and making our citizens happy enough. Our next step will be catching up in military technology, as we are on riflemen while some city states and civs have gotten to great war infantry. We lucked into a massive amount of coal though, so we should be able to field a sizeable navy once we get to Ironclads. We're also trying to shore up our culture by hiring more specialists to generate more great people, that should help as well.

The Ottomans declared war on the city-state of Samarkand, but luckily their strategy was terrible, choosing to assault by sea with land units which allowed Samarkand to fend off the assault quite easily. They are one of our allied city-states, but we don't want to get involved in a conflict right now, as the Ottomans caught one of our spies stealing their technology.
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Indonesia proposed a declaration of friendship, so naturally we took it. They also gave us a nice boost in happiness after they followed us in the path of Freedom, which negated the hits we were taking from other ideologies. We did accomplish 2 big things otherwise:

We won the world's fair, which gave us a nice social policy and culture boost, and we finished the Commerce social policies, which has solved our happiness problems for the rest of time. Now we're focusing on building our navy, as we also discovered another source of Iron for some more frigates, and we'll need all the help we can get if the Ottomans decide to attack us by sea (Indonesia told us they were marching an army to Rome.) We'll see if this peace lasts much longer.
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Go go Rome

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Played a short session last night of about 20 turns, nothing really of note happened. We're getting conflicting reports about who is plotting against us; Indonesia says the Ottomans, the Ottomans say Indonesia, so who knows. We'll just have to keep our border forces strong.

Also late game is oging to be tough because there's 0 aluminum anywhere that I can see, and very little oil, none of which is in my possession.
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Every time I start a game of Civ5 nowadays I get bored fairly quickly.

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Our first vote for the World Congress's final form (when diplomatic victory is possible) has turned out well, we have become host! So far it's looking like that is going to be our main path to victory, as other civs are almost a full tier ahead of us in research (We're barely in modern, 2 civs have hit atomic).

In the meantime, we might actually see some conflict that doesn't involve us! The Ottomans denounced France, I guess because they're taking up land the Ottomans could use. Because, you know, the Ottoman's 20+ cities (I'm not joking) aren't already enough. Perhaps that will help us catch up to them a bit, if it turns into a drawn out battle. The Ottomans and French both have been encroaching on our territory too much for my liking, but I imagine we side with France if war comes, as they are a more direct threat and keeping them happy keeps us happy.
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A breakthrough in the world congress has been reached, we've managed to enact Freedom as the world ideology! This has caused the Ottomans to go into a whopping minus 40 happiness, as well as helped us get closer to a diplomatic victory (which is going to be our only hope as 2 of the 3 civs have already researched the Apollo Program.) France is fighting us for control of 2 city states, but we have more wealth so we should be able to outlast them in that regard.

Meanwhile, the number of cities the Ottomans have is working against them, as it's what's contributing to their massive unhappiness. The City state of Samarkand has already revolted the turn after Freedom was enacted, and joined Indonesia (the more culturally dominant Freedom-follower between us) and they set them free, so that's more votes we can bring under us if we can amass the gold to do so!

Edit: Oh and the citizens immediately forced the Ottomans to adopt Freedom, I guess there will be no more revolts.
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And here we go! France's relationship with both us and Indonesia has rapidly degraded. They remain neutral with us but Indonesia has declared war on them, and have promptly laid siege to their nearby cities.

https://i.imgur.com/0phrdra.png
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Well, that didn't last long. France took the city-state of Samarkand and Indonesia's offensive failed, and the war is already over with peace being declared. Indonesia bit off a bit more than they could chew it seems (though it was mainly their poor tactics that led to defeat, they spread their forces too much to conquer a city.)
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Ugh, these last 20 turns are going to be boring. I've pretty much got diplomatic victory locked up, just have to press next turn 20 more times >.>

France fought over us with money for the favor of the nearest 2 city states, but we managed to overcome it and ally iwth every city state through subterfuge and bribery.
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Oh, it seems France will try to make it interesting at the end here, they have declared war on us. We definitely aren't equipped to deal with them as we have no aluminum and little oil, but we shall do our best to hold out until we can win.
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And we did it! France honestly I wish had declared war on us sooner because uh, us being allied with every city state, and friends with the Ottomans and Indonesia, let to us being able to set the entire world against them, and it did NOT go well. In 10 turns:

In the west, Indonesia and our own navies teamed up and took 2 of their coastal cities quite easily. They also lost another of their cities they had stolen from Indonesia previously.

In the center, we finally broke through the line we could not penetrate so long ago and took their central city of Tours.

To the north, The Ottomans and France unloaded nuclear warheads at each other, leading to both capitals being bathed in fallout. Then France lost their topmost city in Lyon and Paris being close to capture.

That will teach them to pick on someone they deem weaker than themselves. Regarding the game itself, Rome definitely is not my playstyle. Early war is my least favorite thing and it's what they excel at. I also was not very good at the whole "Capital buildings are constructed faster" because Rome was not very production-oriented, which made it difficult to construct buildings there.

I also have determined big time that I don't really like tiny maps. I like having 8 players because 4 grows kinda stale the whole game. I also need to get better at expanding early on, I ended up with over 70 excess happiness. Which is great, but it means I didn't really push the boundaries early on and get more territory, which would have helped our empire greatly.
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Beaten the game:
Ottomans
Germany
Netherlands
Sweden
Poland
Denmark
Songhai
Arabia
Shoshone
Rome

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

Heeeere we go! rolls
"Our words are backed with nuclear weapons!"

It's INDIA. For anyone that doesn't get the joke, in the original civ game an "alleged" bug in Ghandi's programming made it so that he was the most likely in the game BY FAR to try and nuke people, to the point it became a meme in the civ community and eventually an ascended meme as Ghandi still has nuke ratings ABOVE 10 in his characteristic profile (Which is the coding that determines how AI leaders act). I say alleged because apparently Sid Meier denied this bug in a memoir, but regardless, Ghandi will not hesitate to threaten you with nukes if you cross him! So let's take a look at what India's all about, shall we?

Passive: Population Growth - Double unhappiness from # of cities, half unhappiness from # of citizens
War Elephant (replaces Chariot Archer) - No rough terrain penalty, doesn't require horses, stronger, slower to build and move.
Mughal Fort (replaces Castle) - +2 culture per turn, +2 tourism after Flight is researched

I feel like I'm really going to like India. Right after I get done critiquing my slow expansion style, I get a civ who you really WANT to expand more slowly with, it plays right into their strengths. They seem prime for a culture victory, as extra population means more specialists means more great people, not to mention the Mughal Fort bonuses. It will be critical to time new settlements properly though, finding some early luxuries is going to be crucial.
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I think it's after 6 pop an Indian city is better happiness-wise than any other civ. War elephants are fun, Mughal pretty negligible but a decent civ with the long-term overall happiness buff; can be a slow start on grasslands and the initial expansion happiness malus.

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Bump, should be able to start this game tomorrow
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So the wife slept early so I picked the map this time we went to the Bering Strait.

We begin on the coast with a good variety of tiles, including some salt that we promptly settled our capital of Delhi on, and marble to be gotten soon. Initial exploration has already located another good area, with some crab and furs to the east. We started off with the Tradition policy tree (advanced by some nearby ruins) to help our growth. Hopefully there aren't many people nearby, and if they are hopefully they will not be warmongers...
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We finally found the first other civ, the Iroquois! We can't see their location yet but we happened upon a scout to the southwest. Otherwise, it's just city-states around us which is nice, we love getting along with others. There are some bothersome bandits but they shall soon be pacified.

Meanwhile, we discovered a great trove of minerals to the northwest, and and managed to settle the city of Mumbai to claim the bountiful riches in that land. We also built the Temple of Artemis, as well as progressing further in the Tradition policy tree, so our people are very well fed right now. Bountiful harvests for all!

https://i.imgur.com/Ba52whs.png
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We sailed a scouting trireme to the east across the seas and discovered England and Siam in quick succession, as well as Songhai to our more immediate west. Luckily there is quite a lot of rough territory between us that should provide plenty of buffer between us.
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We discovered The Huns to the farthest east of the map, but we won't have to worry about them for a long while. Sadly, we will not be able to found a religion as there are no more allowed to be founded. We were close, but we fell just short of the faith required for a great prophet (usually I use the liberty tree bonus to get a great prophet, but we went tradition this time so we had to get faith the old fashioned way).
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