Need help advancing to Prince - BtS

[jkp1187]

Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out what I should do for the endgame to try to have a snowball's chance in this game. Should I sit tight? SHould I go all-out for military techs up to tanks, build a huge fleet of transports, then try to just overwhelm him on his own continent?

[ben04]

IMHO there is nothing you can do about Joao except win before him. There are two possibilities : Either a diplomatic victory or a domination victory.

If you get the UN build it will be you against Joao. You have a lot more population than Joao so more votes. Also the other civs like you better so it is possible that you will also get their votes.

If you go the UN road, research railroads for the hammer bonus and then go right to the Mass Media. Trade if helpful. Max out science. Culture and ESP are not needed. Trade techs with backwarded civs to:
a) Get better relations
b) Get gold so you set the science slider higher
c) Get them to stop trade/go to war with Joao to make his relations worse

In Köln build the Iron Works and also otherwise optimize for hammers so it can build the UN the fasted possible. Once you're building the UN chop those forests. You wont need them anymore afterwards.

Try the generate a GE in Istanbul to help with the UN. Allocate 3 engineers. Don't worry if some people die because of that. (Try to get more food though trough other improvements.)

In all the other cities max out food. Forget about hammers and happy. Once the Mass media is researched forget also about commerce. Build a granary everywhere. Trade for health resources. Make sure every farm is irrigated. The more population the more votes at the UN.

Converting to Islam could get you some Maya votes. However do this only the turn after the UN is build. Anarchy is something you should avoid.



For a domination victory you need
a) 49% of all population. This should be doable by prioritizing food and trading health resources to you vassals (their population also counts as half). Make also sure your vassals have biology.
b) 60% of the land has to be in your cultural sphere. This is going to be hard. You could go and conquer the Chinese but that probably wont be enough. You will need to go also after the Romans. With Destroyer you should be capable to keep the Mayan people of your continent. Conquering the Roman cities on your continent should be enough. Zara Jacop unfortunately is under Joao protection.


I'd go the UN road.

[sprudl]

I can't look at the save right now so I'm just offering some generic advise.

If you're trying to get support in the UN, you could use espionage to ruin Joao's diplomatic status by switching his civics. Poisoning water in his largest cities and sabotaging food tiles could give an extra edge.

It takes quite an investment though. And it will anger him as you'll get caught a few times.

[jkp1187]

Thanks for the assistance again, guys. So I followed the advice given here and decided that the UN victory route was the best bet, so I pumped up some engineer specialists in Istanbul, kept on building the Ironworks at Cologne, and otherwise built stuff to encourage population growth/recover from the huge wars against Portugal and Khmer that I'd fought previously.

To my astonishment, soon after I resumed the game, the UN was built by....Pacal. Yes, piddly little Pacal decided he was going to try for a diplomatic win. I overwhelmed him on the first vote for Sec-Gen. Joao even voted for ME in that vote (although he steadfastly abstained in the diplomatic victory vote.) As time went on, Joao declared war on Pacal (and his vassal, Caesar,) too. Fearing that he was going to grab the UN for his own purposes, I joined in the war at Joao's request.

Fortunately, Pacal capitulated to Joao before the Portuguese troops actually got to the UN city. So the Sec-Gen elections kept being between me and Pacal -- it was no contest. Joao kept voting for me over his vassal; I had a loc on the Sec-Gen seat for the rest of the game. This really changed the dynamics of the game.

I used the UN to force a peace between Joao and Caesar ("Stop the war against Joao") leaving Rome to capitulate to me instead. Since the UN diplomatic vote was deadlocked, and my cities had recovered amazingly with the extended peace, I decided to try for a spaceship win. I built the Internet in Berlin (picking up a few useful techs along the way) then managed to build the Space Elevator in Ankara. It was going to be close -- Joao had already been building spaceship parts before I had been, but he'd taken a little break during the war against Maya and Rome, so it was closer than it should have been.

Then ol' Qin Shi Huang came knocking and suggested that all the COOL civs used bureaucracy, not this Free Speech nonsense that I'd been running. Qin was Pleased with me, but had also been abstaining in the UN diplomatic victory votes. I thought about it for a second, figured, "what the heck, let's take a gamble," and agreed.

I immediately was sweating it out. Because my empire was so large, it took two turns of anarchy to switch civics. But in the end, it worked. Qin went up to Friendly after a few turns, and the civic switch was enough to throw his diplomatic vote to me. A 'true' diplomatic win in 1993!