Though I have had Civ4 ever since it was released, it has been sitting on my shelf collecting dirt. Until recently a few days after patch 1.52 was released, Julius Caesar came to me in a dream begging me to command his praetorians on grand conquest. I told him that I’m not really interested. The city maintenance cost would tie me up in the ancient age forever. If I can’t assimilate new cities and Great Wonders, what else can I do? Burn them down? I have no choice to spill the enemy blood on the battlefield, but burning down their home cities and killing innocent civilians is a crime against humanity and everything I believe in. Therefore, I have no desire of taming this world. I waked up and for some reason decided to give Civ4 another chance. Therefore, I came up with this strategy to save all cities.

My civ: Roman
Level: Deity (lower level means easier, of course)
Map type: Random Standard “Pangaea” World (smaller map size means easier, of course)
Climate: Temperate
Optional check boxes: No barbarian, No city razing, and No cheating. Default settings for the rest. (After you have won your first Deity game, you can move up a level by turning on barbarian setting)
Epic or Marathon game speed
Minimum of 4 AI players. My favorite adversaries are Spain, Russia, Egypt, England, and America.
Game version: Patch 1.52 or later


Before I begin, there are a few things you need to know. This is a step by step introduction guide written for those who have never won nor attempted a Deity game. This may not be an optimal guide or a best Deity strategy, but it’s a guarantee to score you a Deity win. You are not just simply winning a Deity game, but win it with a really big score too.;)


Step #1: Building your first city
I recommend building Rome right on the spot. The map generator god has been working hard to ensure a balance starting position for everyone. To move the settler away from the given starting position is not recommended. Since the Roman starting out with Fishing and Mining, 100% research on Bronze Working immediately and set to build a warrior in Rome.



Step #2: Use your starting warrior to explore the world, to meet the tribal villages and other civilizations. Don’t expect to learn any new tech from goodie huts, but once in a while you may get lucky with something. The most important task here is to map the shape of the world and study the boundary of the AI players.



Step #3: Rome has finished building a warrior. Set to build a barracks while waiting for your city to grow to at least size 2. After it has growth to size 2, set to build a worker on top of building a barracks. Basically, you delay the production of the barracks and focus on building a worker. Btw, send your second warrior to explore the surrounding a little bit then call him back before Rome about to grow to size 4.



Step #4: If Rome finish building the worker before you discover Bronze Working, have your worker to Mine a near by hill (once Rome has grown to size 4, these hills will come in handy). There is nothing else the worker can do at the moment.



Step #5: You should discover Bronze Working about now. Set to search for The Wheel next. Road is very important. At this point, Rome should still be building a barracks (assuming that it has already finished the worker; if not, it’s still building your first worker at this point).



Step #6: Once your city has grown to size 3, chop more forests to rush at least 3 more workers and 2 settlers. When chopping down the forests, I usually chop the furthest ones first. I recommend chopping the forests near the AI border first.



Step #7: Place your second city wisely. Whenever possible, place your second city to block off AI access to your unclaimed land. Set your second city to build a barracks and allow it to grow.



Step #8: You should discover The Wheel by now. Set research for Iron Working next. You may also want to adjust the slider slightly to keep your research at maximum with your income at zero or slightly on the negative size if you still have money to cover it.



Step #9: If you don’t have bronze within your boundary, use one of your standing by settler and have your workers focus on hooking up bronze. If you already have bronze and there is gold or silver resource near by, build your third city there. I usually will hold off building my third city for as long as I can. I want to allocate as much money to search for Iron Working. If you see Ivory and Furs, just ignore them. You really don’t have time to search for hunting anyway.



Step #10: It will take a long time to finish up Iron Working. In the mean time, allow Rome to grow into size 4 then have it producing more axemans. Also have your people work the tile that yield the most gold so that you can research Iron Working faster.

Tip: Did you know that you can pre-chop the forests. For example, at the Marathon speed, it takes 8 turns to chop a forest; if I don’t really need the shield right way, I would chop each forest for 6 turns, then move on to the next. This mean, when it time to come back finishing the job, my worker would need only 1 more turns to finish chopping them.



Step #11: After hooking up bronze, if your first and second cities haven’t yet finished their barracks, chop some forests to finish them, and then start building some Axemans. Note, take your time with the axemans; try not expanding too fast or you would slow down your research on Iron Working. You may want to go easy on the chopping for while. Now, may be a good time to do some pre-chopping the forests.



Step #12: Finally, you have discovered Iron Working. Your research quota has been met. The Wheel and Iron Working are the only two techs that you really need. From now on, you can research any tech you like, and I won’t talk about research no more. However, I do recommend searching for Mysticism next. Btw, I almost forget…whenever possible, adopt slavery to save 1 gold per turn.



Step #13: Hooking up iron and start chopping all the surrounding forests for rushing as many praetorians as fast as you can. If you don’t have iron within your boundary (this is rarely happened), use your third settler for this task (or start a new game). In the worst case, use your axemans to get some iron. This rarely happen because irons are plentiful on a “temperate” world. At this point, you should have around 3 cities. If you have to build a fourth city in order to hook up iron, it’s ok. I usually just build two cities and save a settler to build the third city after I discover iron.



Step #14: Once you have around a dozen praetorians under your command, pick your nearest victim. By now, one of the AI has already built the Great Pyramid. Hit F9 to see who has the Great Pyramid. If your nearest civ has it, then that is your first target. If not, that will be your second target. Therefore, always plan your path toward the Great Pyramid.



Step #15: Declare war and start eliminating your nearest civ. Unless they have axemans (they rarely do at this point), you should conquer them without any problem. I usually have a couple axemans escorting my praetorians, just in case. My axeman usually get Strength and Shock promotion while my praetorians always get City Raider and Strength promotion. Those silly archers won’t stand a chance against your praetorians with at least Raider I promotion. Since you will be keeping all conquered city, you will run into a negative income pretty soon now. Don’t panic! Since you get at least 100 gold for each city you capture, you can afford to run on negative income for awhile. You should set your research to 0% now. Chances are, you haven’t yet discovered Mysticism, but that’s ok. Like I said before, you need only The Wheel and Iron Working to tame the world.



Step #15: If your citizens complain, ignore them. If your enemy begs for peace, ignore them. Keeps the war going until they are eliminated? In the mean time, continue to rush more praetorians by chopping down the forests. If you run out of your own forests, move to the new recently captured city forests. Don’t bother rushing the barracks any more. I’m sure there are plenty of easy target out there for your troop promotion.



Step #16: You should have successfully conquered at least a half dozen cities by now and have control of the Great Pyramid. Here comes my ultimate secret weapon: Start a revolution right away and put your government in Anarchy for as long as you can. Always chose a combination of options that would yield the longest period of time in Anarchy. I usually spend at least 3 turns in anarchy each time. Note: there is a minimum of 4 turns between each revolution. If you spend 3 turns in anarchy, you will have to spend 1 normal turn before you can start another revolution. In the mean time, keep on chopping your forests and keep on capturing new cities. The more cities you capture, the more time you will get to spend in anarchy. Soon, you will find out that you will have to spend at least 5 turns minimum in anarchy which is perfect (this mean you can start another revolution immediately right after your government emerges from anarchy). The bad news is that you don’t earn any money, culture, and production during anarchy. The good news is that you don’t loss any money either. Best of all, all the shield you gain from chopping the forests will stack up on the building queue which means you just need to spend at least 1 turn every now and then in order to mass producing new units.



Step #17: That’s it! Isn’t that easy? You should have no problem eliminate all of the other civs on the planet and win by either conquests or domination. Note: I haven't yet seen a lot of axemans, but if you do, remember to run for cover. Unless they are desperately defending their cities, leave them alone. Just fortify your troops on the hills and wait for them to come to you. Other than axeman, there is no other units that can really withstand the charge of your praetorians. You should be ruling the world long before the next age.


If you play this game on a dual map, you should earn a score of at least 120,000 points, at least 130,000 points for a tiny map, at least 200,000 points for a small map, at least 250,000 points for a standard map, and at least 300,000 points for a large map. I haven’t yet tried it on a huge map. Congrats! Now, you can tell all your friends that you have won a Deity game. It’s really that simple. I have never lost a game using this tactic. My current high HOF score for a standard map is over 280,000 points. If you happens to beat it, please remember to submit it to the CivFanatics HoF. Last but not least, I do seriously hope for world peace.

Note for Patch 1.61:
In patch 1.61, there is a 5 turns wait at the end of each the anarchy period. Therefore, perpetual anarchy may not possible. The number of production gain from chopping the forests has also been reduced; therefore, an early rush is now some what less effective.

Reserve for future revision #2

Reserve for future revision #3

Wow, impressive, I just wonder why you want to be in anarchy. You don't lose any money, but not being able to produce units without chops seems to not make up for it.

I imagine she's at the point where the negative income is so bad that her units would be disbanded if not for the anarchy. Impressive guide. I figured you had milked those 200k+ scores. But you just conquered as fast as possible while controlling as much territory as possible? Or did you stop short of victory and proceed to milk?

Epic? Ugh. Will this work on a standard speed too?

The faster the speed, the harder it is. Your troops will take 50% longer to reach the other side of the map which is 50% longer the AI's can research, expand, and build military.

I am convinced that fast speeds are meant for small maps, and vice versa. Playing quick on a huge map is the ultimate peacemonger setting; playing marathon on a duel map is the ultimate warmonger setting.

@Moonsinger, very good idea to maximize the benefits of anarchy! :goodjob:

Shillen, thanks for answering Khaim's question. You are correct, of course.

Btw, when I'm running out of gold, all of my units will go on STRIKE but they will also give me exactly one turn to pay their wage (to get back on positive income). Therefore, I don't really loss any units at all. That one free turn is good enough for me to rush produce my units/improvement and have plenty of time for long vacation before I'm going back to anarchy.:) Basically, I could jump in and out anarchy to milk the game until 2050 AD if I want to. So far, I haven't yet milked any of my game. Therefore, I was just barely scratch the potential score. I'm sure 300K or more on a standard map is very doable. Here is a screenshot of my last game. As you see, I was at -581 gpt...no problem whatsoever.

Wow, impressive, I just wonder why you want to be in anarchy. You don't lose any money, but not being able to produce units without chops seems to not make up for it.

Chopping is really much faster. At this early stage of the game, it would take forever to produce a unit. With chopping, you can roll out new unit almost every turn. Btw, don't forget that you would also capture a lot of workers along the way too. Those newly conquered cities are usually huge in size which mean you can also pop-rush some more units from them too. It really doesn't take much to out-produce the AIs while I'm still in anarchy.

This is the most hilariously imaginative exploit of Civ4 I've yet seen. I laughed out loud seeing that screenshot with the -581 gpt and 30-odd cities at 115 AD. I'm sure this will be fixed in the next patch. :devil:

Leave it to Moonsinger to conquer and want to keep all those cities.

I expect this strategy will be modified in a future patch. Or I hope anyway!

Cool, now I know how to beat Deity without cheating for a super city, or simply rushing on a duel map.

Thanks! o_o

Praetorians=overpowered.
Chopping=overpowered.

Add the two together...


Very nice game and strategy, Moonsinger. I wonder how this tactic would work for GOTM? Swordsmen and forest chops anyone? :lol:

Nicely played Moonsinger.

Very clever,Moonsinger.Now,a challenge for (a warmonger who also likes build?)how to fight against?
Best regards,

A similar exploit to this was in Civ 3 - especially multiplayer, where staying perpetually in Anarchy allowed the support costs of a large army be maintained.

Congrats for doing this on Civ 4, Moonsinger. It is an exploit though - and surely not how the game is supposed to be played.

It would be interesting to try this on continents, after conquesting a large continent and rebuilding your economy the game should be able to be won normally I imagine, would be a good challenge.

It would be interesting to try this on continents, after conquesting a large continent and rebuilding your economy the game should be able to be won normally I imagine, would be a good challenge.

If you're at -100 per turn it'd be hard to 'recover'. Every worker building cottages gets disbanded ;).

If you're at -100 per turn it'd be hard to 'recover'. Every worker building cottages gets disbanded ;).

Once you have your own continent, you can probably disband a hell of a lot of those praetorians, and if there are any forests left chop your cheap courthouses. I'm thinking you'd be WAY behind the diety level civs on the other continent though, so catching up may not be possible.

Once you have your own continent, you can probably disband a hell of a lot of those praetorians, and if there are any forests left chop your cheap courthouses. I'm thinking you'd be WAY behind the diety level civs on the other continent though, so catching up may not be possible.

I think you are on to something great there. If you wait until the local civs on your home continent to get Alphabet, then milk them for all their techs before elminate them, you could rebuild your own continent. If there are no more forests to chop, pop-rush the courthouse instead.

If you play this game on a dual map, you should earn a score of at least 120,000 points, at least 130,000 points for a tiny map, at least 200,000 points for a small map, at least 250,000 points for a standard map, and at least 300,000 points for a large map.
Are you sure about the different scores for different map sizes? I thought the scoring formula did a pretty good job of normalizing the score so that the max score didn't depend on map size. I would think that means that it's easier to get a high score on the smallest mapsizes as there are less AIs and less distance to travel to reach them, and less cities required to reach high population/land earlier.

Are you sure about the different scores for different map sizes? I thought the scoring formula did a pretty good job of normalizing the score so that the max score didn't depend on map size. I would think that means that it's easier to get a high score on the smallest mapsizes as there are less AIs and less distance to travel to reach them, and less cities required to reach high population/land earlier.

My estimate score for different map size was based on the minimum score of actual games that I have played so far using this tactic. Different approach to the game probably will yield a different set of scores. If you take a look at all the games I have played so far using this tactic, you will see that the score does actually increase consistently base on map size and difficulty level.

It would be interesting to try this on continents, after conquesting a large continent and rebuilding your economy the game should be able to be won normally I imagine, would be a good challenge.

I suspect the biggest problem with this would be the Pyramids. As I understand it (haven't actually tried it yet), the Pyramids are vital in order to give you enough civics options to stay in anarchy. On a pangaea map, you can be certain of conquering the Pyramids sooner or later. On a continents map, you stand a fairly decent chance of finding the Pyramids on another continent. Then you're screwed.

If the Pyramids really are as critical as I think, this might also put a lower bound on the difficulty levels where this strategy can work. For example, if you tried it on Settler, there's virtually no way the AI could build the Pyramids for you before your city maintenance costs bring your economy to its knees.

I have been thinking...instead of keeping all these cities, it may be better to give most of all of them to the strongest and farest civ for safe keeping. The maintenance costs will definitely kill them. This would give us a chance to rebuild our economy while destroying theirs.

AIs won't accept cities if the maintenence cost will kill them.

I'm a newbie to the whole Civ thing so I'm calling this as I see it.....which may not necessarily be correct.

I don't understand how you get more than one turn of anarchy when you change Civics. I ran this strategy at Noble and even with Great Pyramid I still could only change one civic at a time (and hence only one turn of anarchy) because I didn't have more than one ofthe others in the other columns. I still won a domination victory....but only just. Does Diety impose longer periods of anarchy than Noble or am I doing something wrong?
I was also interested to know if you took on more than one AI opponent at a time. I suspect I was too timid and went for them in sequence rather than going in hard early with whoever was closest.

I don't understand how you get more than one turn of anarchy when you change Civics. I ran this strategy at Noble and even with Great Pyramid I still could only change one civic at a time...


I'm not sure how you coud only change one at a time, if you have the pyramids then you have access to all government civics, and you have bronze so access to slavery. Thats two fields which you can change each time. Not sure if Moon did any tech extortion but you can usually get some relgious civics early on, Organized Religion being popular with the AI, so that gives you three. You likely won't be getting an economic civics easily but getting either Feudalism or Civil Service will give you a fourth civic option.

I'm not sure how you coud only change one at a time, if you have the pyramids then you have access to all government civics, and you have bronze so access to slavery. Thats two fields which you can change each time. .[/QUOTE]

I had all the Gov. civics plus slavery....but changing both at once still only produced one turn of anarchy. Go figure...:))

Daydream were you playing on Marathon setting? i assume the anarchy time is increased at longer gamespeeds.

Great work Moonsinger.

Thank you Jafink......I was only playing at normal.....and now I've reread Moonsingers opening criteria I can see I missed that most important detail.

No wonder I just scraped in ahead of the collapse of my economy....newbies luck...lol

Also I see it was done without animal husbandry. I usually would have researched that first, but that's clearly not the best path.

AIs won't accept cities if the maintenence cost will kill them.

Thanks! There goes another dream.

I don't understand how you get more than one turn of anarchy when you change Civics. I ran this strategy at Noble and even with Great Pyramid I still could only change one civic at a time (and hence only one turn of anarchy) because I didn't have more than one ofthe others in the other columns. I still won a domination victory....but only just. Does Diety impose longer periods of anarchy than Noble or am I doing something wrong?
I was also interested to know if you took on more than one AI opponent at a time. I suspect I was too timid and went for them in sequence rather than going in hard early with whoever was closest.

Yes, you can selection more than one civic combination, and there are a lot of combination. For example, Tribalism and Police State, Police State and Slavery, ...., etc.

I had all the Gov. civics plus slavery....but changing both at once still only produced one turn of anarchy. Go figure...:))

Were you playing a religious civ? The religious civ would always spend 1 turn in anarchy no matter what. Please note that the Roman isn't a religious civ. This tatic definitely won't work on the religious civ.

//Edit: Never mind. I now see that you were playing at the normal speed. Yes, that would explain it too.

amazing strategy!! :)
just curious, how this strategy will fare for civilizations other Roman when only swordmen are available?

Impressive, to say the least.

amazing strategy!! :)
just curious, how this strategy will fare for civilizations other Roman when only swordmen are available?

I believe it would work for any civ that starting with either The Wheel or Mining. If your civ start with The Wheel, you can start searching for Mining right away, then go to Bronze, and then Iron Working. However, since the regular swordman is weaker than praetorian, you may have to slow down to replace their lost. The Roman praetorian is the best choice (especially for anyone who hasn't beaten the Deity level yet).

I love how in the screenshot, Rome is building a settler. Isn't 60 cities enough already? :crazyeye:

I love how in the screenshot, Rome is building a settler. Isn't 60 cities enough already? :crazyeye:
If you saw a screenshot of one of Moonsinger's Civ3 games you'd be saying "Isn't 500 cities enough already?" :D

@Moonsinger: We're banning this for the GOTM (call us the 'fun police' :p) Anyway - bradleyfeanor suggested that we run our proposed wording past you:

Do you think this covers it well enough?

Anarchy Exploit: You may not use perpetual anarchy as a means to avoid losing units due to maintenance costs. A guideline is that if you have no gold and negative income, you must wait 4 turns after your anarchy ends before you can revolt again.

Playing with Barbarians turned on is a totally different game.

On Diety games I regularly kill TEN barbarian units for each AI enemy unit. They are a huge pain and will sometimes gang up on your cities with three or four units. They also blow up improvements and cut my roads.

I play on regular settings with the standard nine random opponents at regular speed an on a HUGE continental map. I've won about three different games back on the 1.09 release. Just installed the 1.52 patch yesterday after all the holiday hustle.

Incans are my choice civ.

You start with a Quecha Unit.
Financial helps with the per turn deficits.
Aggressive is good for beating down AIs.

I restart the game if I don't get an ideal map.

I look for three things.

1. A nice long river to expand my trade network.
2. A nearby goodie hut which will give me a scout.
3. A nearby stone quarry to help with Stonehenge and Pyramids.

Build order in my capital city is usually worker, worker, barricks, quecha, quecha, quecha, quecha, library, settler.
For captured cities my build order is always barricks, quecha, quecha, quecha, etc..

Research order is mining, bronzeworking, wheel, masonry, animal husbandry, writing, alphabet, mathematics, currency.

Usually I can find a couple key techs using a scout to reduce the number of techs on the way to currency.

Bronzeworking is needed for forest chopping.
Wheel helps move your troops around faster and connecting a stone quarry.
Masonry is for helping build stonehenge and pyramids.
Writing is needed for libraries when you get Representation with pyramids. 6 science vials per specialist.
Currency is needed to deal with the crazy budget deficits that will bankrupt you if you can't get currency fast enough.

The two biggest problems I have on my Diety games are Barbarians and Spending.

Barbarians force you to produce a bunch of troops to defend your cities. This is really annoying especially after you conquer new cities and have to wait for new support troops to arrive to garrison the city before you can move your experienced city attackers. Barbarians will pop up anywhere there is fog of war. They even build cities left and right. I had a 4x5 unoccupied space between five cities and barbs decided to found a city right in the middle of my civ. I ended up putting Quecha warriors on forested hill tiles outside my city perimeters to reduce fog of war. This worked much better than providing individual worker escorts for chopping down trees.

Running out of money and having your troops start to disband can turn your perfect game into a house a cards within a couple turns. Once I get Masonry and Writing I dial back on science spending and try to get workers to chop out Pyramids. Once I have pyramids I switch to representation and use scientists to generate science while setting the slider to 0% science. I need to use the slider to generate as much income per turn just to support the number of cities in my CIV. Switching all my cities to generate commerce is key as well. Using workers to build commerce improvements like gold mines or farms on commerce squares helps. Cottages take too long to develop, plus you have no science to spare for pottery until you get to currency. Getting currency solves all your problems. Building markets generate 25% more commerce, plus you can turn hammers into commerce. Sometimes I'll resort to pillaging enemy AI improvements if it doesn't look like I'm going to have enough coin to get to currency.

I start as many wars as I can handle and never build settlers until I can get currency. The extra undevelloped cities would just crimp my economy. Expanding with settlers is slower than just building troops and conquering.

I'll usually send out my starting Quecha to take out ONE AI Civ by himself. Having a promoted scout with a medic promotions helps a lot too in enemy territory. The starting civs usually only have two archers in each city.

Within 25 turns I should own three cities. My capital and two enemy civ cities.

I turn each city into a troop station and start three seperate wars with each city producing a stream of Quecha for each battle front.

Axemen/Spearmen combos are good once you Quecha start facing other axement and spearmen.
Stacks of Catapults can wreck cities left and right even ones which are garrissoned with crossbow and longbowmen.

I usually beeline to steel/chemistry to upgrade my catapults to cannons and to create grenadiers to keep my conquest rush going.

Religion is a tough sell. I don't pick one so I don't piss any AI civs off by being a heathen. Attacking an AI Civ which isn't like by other Civs doesn't create any relationship penalities either so it's better to have the AIs pick religions and let them fight it out sometimes. I usually end up with half of the relgions early on just by conqueries holy cities. Getting stonehenge means you can get a Great Prophet to build a holy shrine. A holy shrine will generate commerce per turn even if you don't pick a state religion. Two holy shrines in two different cities is better than one holy shrine and state religion.

I think I'll give the Romans a shot next. Organized is a lot more useful I think than Financial if you are rushing. Praetorians are a lot more expensive and come a lot later, but should be able to survive more. I lose a ton of cheap Quecha bum rushing cities.

A nearby goodie hut which will give me a scout.

You have to get pretty lucky to get a scout. Usually you get cash, or hostile barbs. Do you just abandon those games and start over?

Usually I can find a couple key techs using a scout to reduce the number of techs on the way to currency.

This seems like it would require extraordinarily good luck. I find that I rarely get techs from huts. And you aren't going to find many huts before the AI with so many units on the map.

If you're restarting every game when you don't get such good luck, it seems like a whole lot of restarts. Why not just play at a lower difficulty but not restart?

@Moonsinger: We're banning this for the GOTM (call us the 'fun police' :p) Anyway - bradleyfeanor suggested that we run our proposed wording past you:

Do you think this covers it well enough?

Anarchy Exploit: You may not use perpetual anarchy as a means to avoid losing units due to maintenance costs. A guideline is that if you have no gold and negative income, you must wait 4 turns after your anarchy ends before you can revolt again.

Ban already?:( Why? Hopefully, they are not banning for the HOF.:) I really don't think this banning is fair. The only reason I don't raze those cities is because of my personal belief. Otherwise, I can just use the same technique, but raze everything on my path. In the end, I would still be beating the Deity level and win by Conquests. Anyway, are you going to ban razing cities too? ;) The only exploit I see here is over-chopping the forests, since the AI doesn't really chop that much.

The only exploit I see here is over-chopping the forests, since the AI doesn't really chop that much.


Chopping forests is working exactly as intended, while this anarchy deal is so obviously not.

Come on now...why the surprise act?

Ban already?:( Why? Hopefully, they are not banning for the HOF.:) I really don't think this banning is fair. The only reason I don't raze those cities is because of my personal belief. Otherwise, I can just use the same technique, but raze everything on my path. In the end, I would still be beating the Deity level and win by Conquests. Anyway, are you going to ban razing cities too? ;) The only exploit I see here is over-chopping the forests, since the AI doesn't really chop that much.
We are banning it because it appears to be a very powerful exploit - essentially its circumventing the main game mechanic that restricts growth.

If you want to use this in the GOTM (if we can lure you back to the GOTM - you never got an eptathlon award in the Civ3 version, BTW :mischief: ), then fine - just raze the cities, and keep yourself from a negative income - in which case, its no longer really an exploit. :)

It's obviously a bug that you can avoid the forced disband by staying in perpetual anarchy, and hopefully they will fix it in the next patch. I think they should count the number of turns until you can enter anarchy again from the end of the previous anarchy, instead of the beginning of the previous anarchy. (I thought this was how it actually worked, until this thread, never having tried it myself.)

If you can really achieve the same result without exploiting this bug, then, the ban should not bother you much. But if you raze most of the cities, then, at least, your score will be much lower.

Also, razing the cities means fewer cities that can chop rush praetorians.

I would like to see another strategy article for deity level that doesn't involve perpetual anarchy. If anyone have some tidbits of wisdom, please post it here.

We are banning it because it appears to be a very powerful exploit - essentially its circumventing the main game mechanic that restricts growth.

If you want to use this in the GOTM (if we can lure you back to the GOTM - you never got an eptathlon award in the Civ3 version, BTW :mischief: ), then fine - just raze the cities, and keep yourself from a negative income - in which case, its no longer really an exploit. :)

Actually, I do understand why you want to ban it in the GOTM. Otherwise, many people will just shoot for fast domination victory because that seems like a best way to ensure a really high score. I'm really not banking too much on this tactic. Launching a spaceship in the end has always been my style.:)

I would like to see another strategy article for deity level that doesn't involve perpetual anarchy. If anyone have some tidbits of wisdom, please post it here.

You can just use the same tactic, but allow city razing. Just reduce the AI to one city and milk them for tech. If they rebuild, destroy them again. That should keep them busy producing settler forever.;)


Also, razing the cities means fewer cities that can chop rush praetorians.

You can always chop any forest from far far away and outside your boundary; your nearest city from that forest will get its shields/hammers. I think there may be a distant limit, but I haven't yet run into that limitation yet.

You get less hammers the further you are from the city. It goes down really fast. You can see the graph in another article in this forum.

As for milking techs, that doesn't work so well in Civ4. The AI is quite stingy now and sometimes would rather be assimilited than give up anything.

You get less hammers the further you are from the city. It goes down really fast. You can see the graph in another article in this forum.

As for milking techs, that doesn't work so well in Civ4. The AI is quite stingy now and sometimes would rather be assimilited than give up anything.

Graph (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=148258)

Req

Ban already?:( Why? Hopefully, they are not banning for the HOF.:)

Well its the beta HOF, and I expect this exploit to be promptly corrected in the next patch so will in essense be disallowed because it will no longer exist in the Final and All Powerful Non-beta HOF. (The final HOF name is just a guess.)

Praetorians tramp the barren hills,
No trees, the vales and meadows, fill;
Woodsmen working dark to dawn
An endless stream of legions spawn;
Pilum thrown and sword in hand
Against her might, no armies stand;
Always forward, never back,
Take the city, never sack;
Despair at home tells the story
Of Moonsinger's skill and conquest glory.

Awesome strategy :hatsoff:

Praetorians tramp the barren hills,
No trees, the vales and meadows, fill;
Woodsmen working dark to dawn
An endless stream of legions spawn;
Pilum thrown and sword in hand
Against her might, no armies stand;
Always forward, never back,
Take the city, never sack;
Despair at home tells the story
Of Moonsinger's skill and conquest glory.



Nice poem

Even if this is an exploit ( I think it is ) it is nice to know that an strategy that you can use to win on diety.

OK, I've tried this strategy to the letter 3 times now. All three times, an AI civ declared war on me shortly before or after the second city. What am I missing?

//Edit: Never mind. I now see that you were playing at the normal speed. Yes, that would explain it too.

So extending the number of turns required for a next revolution on slower game speeds would kill this strategy?

impressive stratgy. a great idea of usage of the anarchy.

Daviddesj is right,it's just a mistake of the game'creators.
The pause between revolutions should be counted from the end,not the begining,of the previous one.And,why I say it is a mistake and not a normal strategy?Because it turns a trait(spiritual)into a disadvantage.
Best regards,

OK, I've tried this strategy to the letter 3 times now. All three times, an AI civ declared war on me shortly before or after the second city. What am I missing?

Same here. I always seem to manage that the AI declares war... Am I simply too slow? Moonsinger (or everyone who successfully won with that strategy), could you please post some corner dates like, when did u research Iron Working (in marathon, of course) or when did ur first Praetorian hit an enemy?

Thanks a lot...

OK, I've tried this strategy to the letter 3 times now. All three times, an AI civ declared war on me shortly before or after the second city. What am I missing?

Post your 4000BC save and a save from the year they declared war on you; I will check them out. Btw, did you sign open border treaty with anyone? If you do that before you can defend yourself, someone may get angry with you. Also, who are the AIs in your game? Issabel is very nice, you should pick her. Catherine is also very nice and often very powerful too; she usually goes to war against someone else long before I discover Iron. I also pick Washington, he seems nice. Both of the English queens are usually warmongers and most likely will attack you early. Oh, from what I heard, India is also peaceful too.

Also make you to hook up Bronze ASAP and start rolling out some axeman right away, just in case.

So extending the number of turns required for a next revolution on slower game speeds would kill this strategy?

No, you slower the game speed = the better for this strategy. Therefore, Marathon is the best; Epic is ok too, but I don't recommend Normal or Quick (since I have never played anything on Normal or Quick speed, I don't know much about them).

Same here. I always seem to manage that the AI declares war... Am I simply too slow? Moonsinger (or everyone who successfully won with that strategy), could you please post some corner dates like, when did u research Iron Working (in marathon, of course) or when did ur first Praetorian hit an enemy?

Thanks a lot...

I would like to take a look at your 4000BC save and your save of the turn they declare war. Of all the games, I have play so far, only two times that someone declare war on me before I hook up iron. It was England on both count and both were on large world map.

Long time I've not see a post from Moosinger...
Well I'm really impressed by how you manage civ games from civ2, civ3 and now civ4...

For me, the concept of milking a game is from you! and I can not beleive you reach more than 280.000 score at deity. Well congratulations for your strategies... and for sharing it with all the overs...

Hope you will find a new strategy for milking civ4 games....

could you please post some corner dates like, when did u research Iron Working (in marathon, of course) or when did ur first Praetorian hit an enemy?

Here is a log from my 280K game on standard map size from 4000BC to my first war:

Long time I've not see a post from Moosinger...
Well I'm really impressed by how you manage civ games from civ2, civ3 and now civ4...

For me, the concept of milking a game is from you! and I can not beleive you reach more than 280.000 score at deity. Well congratulations for your strategies... and for sharing it with all the overs...

Hope you will find a new strategy for milking civ4 games....

Thanks for your kind words. I haven't played much of any game lately; therefore, haven't been posting much. I just decided to seriously give Civ4 a try about 10 days ago. At the moment, I'm still new at this game. So far, I have played about 15 games. Civ4 seems a lot easier than Civ3. Once the HOF settle down with an official set of rules and no longer being "beta", I will focus on milking strategies. In the mean time, I'm just having fun learning Civ4. There are still a lot to learn.

So extending the number of turns required for a next revolution on slower game speeds would kill this strategy?

No, you slower the game speed = the better for this strategy. Therefore, Marathon is the best; Epic is ok too, but I don't recommend Normal or Quick (since I have never played anything on Normal or Quick speed, I don't know much about them).

What he's saying is what I said in a previous post---at Marathon speed, everything is supposed to take twice as long as at Normal speed, but there are some bugs still, and you seem to have found one. If they fix it so that you can only enter Anarchy after 10 turns (2x the number at Normal speed), then your strategy will work much less well.

"Anarchistic" Mad Praetorian Rush. :lol:

Actually, Anarchy is not required, the game can be won with Caesar without constant revolutions up to Standard size map and 5 or even 6 AIs on Deity but not by Domination. The trick is to balance plunder with expenses. Since on Deity, AI cities are larger this makes plunder more abundant as well.

But this guide is intended to work 100%, so Anarchy actually helps.

The game is broken somewhere around Pangea and Caesar. ;)

"Anarchistic" Mad Praetorian Rush. :lol:

Actually, Anarchy is not required, the game can be won with Caesar without constant revolutions up to Standard size map and 5 or even 6 AIs on Deity but not by Domination. The trick is to balance plunder with expenses. Since on Deity, AI cities are larger this makes plunder more abundant as well.

But this guide is intended to work 100%, so Anarchy actually helps.

The game is broken somewhere around Pangea and Caesar. ;)

Exactly!:goodjob: You read my mind. Moreover, the Pyramid and the anarchy business is to help maximize the score (more land and more population = more score).;)

Alright, I made a 4th attempt tonight. At least I got iron before Peter declared war on me. I might have fared better if I hadnt lost copper early on to border shift and couldnt build axemen. Not signing open borders and not choosing a state religion seemed to help prolong the inevitable.

BTW, creating a strategy that involves selecting peace loving opponents is flawed IMHO. That's almost worst than exploiting anarchy to me.

Attempt #5. War by 1870BC w/ Greece.

Apparently this strat doesn't work unless you handpick your enemies not to attack you.

BTW, creating a strategy that involves selecting peace loving opponents is flawed IMHO. That's almost worst than exploiting anarchy to me.

Realize that Moonsinger appears to play mostly HOF games, where maximizing score is the goal. Also HOF rules allow picking your opponents. By doing so she, and other HOF players, can best get the high score they are looking for. You'll notice when you read players HOF games the majority of the time the opponents are picked.

Alright, I made a 4th attempt tonight. At least I got iron before Peter declared war on me. I might have fared better if I hadnt lost copper early on to border shift and couldnt build axemen. Not signing open borders and not choosing a state religion seemed to help prolong the inevitable.

BTW, creating a strategy that involves selecting peace loving opponents is flawed IMHO. That's almost worst than exploiting anarchy to me.

Thanks for posting your save game! Wow, you are playing a large Deity map against 7 AIs!:crazyeye: Have you tried any other Deity game on tiny, small, or standard map yet? If not, I recommend starting with something easier and work your way up.

Anyway, you have built too many warriors and not enough workers. Your logs show me that you had built 16 warriors and only 2 workers so far. Until you have mastered the technique, please try to start with a smaller map size and fewer opponents. Here is a brand new game I just started with the Russian. May want to check it out to see how I do it until a few turns after I finished searching iron. If you want any other save games, don't hesitate to ask.

BTW, creating a strategy that involves selecting peace loving opponents is flawed IMHO. That's almost worst than exploiting anarchy to me.

True! However, if you just want to learn the game or learn how to master the Deity level, you may want to start out with peaceful opponents. Once you have won your first Deity game, step a level by enable barbs and selecting warmonger AIs.

Attempt #5. War by 1870BC w/ Greece.

Apparently this strat doesn't work unless you handpick your enemies not to attack you.

Again, this is a large Deity map against 8 AIs. Are you trying to set yourself up for failure?;)

Realize that Moonsinger appears to play mostly HOF games, where maximizing score is the goal. Also HOF rules allow picking your opponents. By doing so she, and other HOF players, can best get the high score they are looking for. You'll notice when you read players HOF games the majority of the time the opponents are picked.

For the purpose of this thread, the only reason I'm suggesting to pick peaceful opponents and no barbs is because this guide is intented as an introduction to Deity.

I had one game where I only have three cities, and I ran out of trees to chop, and only have jungles left, kind of make it much harder to implement your strategy.

Alright, I just tried the strategy with peaceful civs, and sure enough, I was able to build up an army and wipe out a couple of my neighbors. Didn't get enough civic techs to survive the cost between anarchies though and the strikes ate my units away. Still I learned a lot this last time. Just being able to survive and wage war on deity is pretty kewl. Thanks Moonsinger.

I'm curious if you'd have better luck than I did using random AI with several warmonger civs. Seems like, regardless the starting position or amount of defense, the warmongers always declared war by the time I had a second city. Surely there must be a way to beat deity with aggressive neighbors.

Would This Stragety Work as well with persian immortals?

Would This Stragety Work as well with persian immortals?

I have never beat a difficulty higher than monarch, so this might not be true, but i think that since the ai on diety researches so quickly, the immortals would become obsolete very soon.

i tried this strategy this morning and the biggest problem i had is that AI develop very fast and by the time i could rush Roman UU, there aren't many forest left (on tiny map. AI surrounded my land so fast even at marathon speed). i can get about 4-5 of them before i run out of forest. i have to declare war on AI to get more forest. but 4-5 UU run out pretty soon...

Excellent inventive thinking Moonsinger. How anarhy works is probably an exploit, but that doesn't diminish your creative solution.

In reply to my former post (under the name of DolAtoR): I finally managed to win with this strategy (standard map, marathon speed, deity level, 4 opponents: Catherine, Gandhi, Isabella, Washington). The key in this game was the geographic distance I had to my enemies, their first settlement that bordered my territory came arround the time I had 5 axeman and was close to finish my research on IW (bout 6 turns).
I finished the game with some 330k something points in 340 BC, and learned quite a lot. I had nothing to do with Pyramids, though - Catherine had them (strongest opponent), and they were too far away. I did not get them before 500 BC. It was possible to dump my civ into anarchy long enough because I was able to swith RELIGIONS as well as from slavery to nothing: this gave me perpetual anarchy as well once I had enough cities for the anarchy to last 3 turns.
It was interesting, nevertheless I think that there are too many unbalanced things that are exploited:
First I do not agree that anarchy itself is an exploit - why not play like barbarians, only waging war, not caring for anything except building strong military units - but I totally agree that it lasts too short on marathon speed, should be sth like 10 turns imo.
Second the pretorians are NOT overpowered - there is a reason that Rome was THE leading civ in its days. But, they are still too cheap to build. A pretorian demanded a long and expensive education, strong and again expensive armory and weapons.

Despite those points, it is possible to play the game like that (under 1.52), and I am always against rules that prevent sth that is IN the game. Reloading is not, anarchy, pretorians and forest chopping are. So, this strategy is innovative and well thought through - thanks for posting it, Moonsinger!

Thanks to Moosinger's strategy I have a conquest victory around 560AD for a 60.000 scoring.
Well it's my best Civ4 score. (prévious around 56.000).
I did not use the anarchy strategy. I burn some cities.
I 've played at deity: still too hard for me!

I had problem with maintenance cost: as I do not use the anarchy permanent revolt, I had to disband units (praetorians and workers).
I maximize commerce in all the cities to get the most cash possible and built 3 chariots in order to pillage all lands improvments.

60000??.come on man what level did you play.?you can get that score with settler.:)

A_Turkish_Guy : i've played at Prince I think :( :(

I Also Play Mainly With Ceaser On Normal Speed Though.my Prefered Style Of Play Before This Strategy Was "beat Them Up" And Now It Became "beat Them Up To The Ground With No Chance Of Counterattack" - This Strategy Is Great!!!
I Wanted To Just Ask - How Many Pretorians Do U Have At The Finish Of Your Game And Do U Build Any Other Buildings Different From Barracks?

Even if this is an exploit ( I think it is ) it is nice to know that an strategy that you can use to win on diety.


Well if exploiting doesn't matter to you just try the Ctrl-W strategy and win any map and difficulty you wish.

The strategy descibed here is an exploit. However, I heap praise onto Moonsinger for using this technique. After all the whole game is a matter of exploiting the mechanics of the game in such a way as to gain advantage. Top marks Moonsinger.

The strategy she descibed inspired me to use a rush of praetorians on my last game. 8 civs, no barbarians, epic speed, small panagea map, no city razing, monarch level.

From the start the plan was to settle three cities, build barracks in each and create a small team of workers to link up resources and chop rush praetorians.

Very soon I had a small but powerful army and marched them to my nearest neighbour Tokugawa of Japan. My praetorians crushed his archers and 10 turns later my empire included 4 ex-Japanese cities. During this short war my three original cities were pumping out more praetorians in preparation for the destruction of Washington's empire. Taking Washington (with Pyramids), New York and Boston was easy with level 3 praetorians.

By 250AD, I had 10 cities, a scary army, and the pyramids. I had the highest score, much more land than any of my rivals. In general a convincing lead.

The downside of this tactic was the cost to my economy. Running 10 cities in the early game is expensive. As a result I lagged behind on science and could only apply 60% of my commerce to science. However, now that war was over I could sit back and allow my new cities to mature.

I B lined to Liberalism (free tech) and got the Taj Mahal and at the end of my first golden age I was unstoppable. Space race victory by 1864.

All inspired by Moonsingers praetorian rush!!!

I don't really care for Caesar's organised trait so next time I will try a similar tactic using the Incan (aggresive and financial) Que Cha to take out my two nearest rivals. The Que Cha need no resources and only cost 15 hammers on normal speed against 40 hammers for praetorians.

That was my first game playing at Monarch level having worked up from the novice ranks. It was an easy victory.

I like the early rush strategy in preference to slowly building a base of my own cities. Get your rivals to do the hard work then take their empires from them before they have time to get strong.

I gave this strategy a whirl last night and won a conquest victory in 390AD worth about 60k (Noble) - sure, not much but its a start. I did make a few mistakes and I have some questions / observations and stats ...

Mistakes:
1) Didn't hook up copper so produced warriors until my Praetorian army came on stream
2) Listened to the suggested placement for my city with Iron - result, iron was outside the city and I had to waste about 20 turns expanding that city
3) Failed to check 'no barbs' and lost 8 workers to them - that is what happens when a male follows instructions

Stats:
1) Produced 56 Praetorians and 28 Axemen (some of these were warriors that I upgraded)
2) Killed 43 Archers, 1 Chariot, 6 War Chariots, 3 axemen, 20 Warriors, 6 Workers, 2 Settlers, 1 Bear and 2 Lions
3) Lost 8 workers (@#$%$ barbs) and only 10 Praetorians

Observations:
1) I wish there was an auto-chop forest option - maybe someone could create a mod
2) I must learn how to set rally points (see here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=151544))
3) You only really need one extra unit to take a city (ie if there are 4 units in a city, attack with 5 and you should take it) - this was even true when fighting axemen as long as there wasn't any city / terrain bonus
4) Alt Click unit in the product screen was really useful - keep producing Praetorians

Questions:
1) Do you leave a unit in a newly captured city or just leave the city empty?

I always leave 1 or 2 units in a captured city for happiness and defence

Would This Stragety Work as well with persian immortals?

From the unit stats i do not think so.

Praetorians do not have a real counter, immortals do have.

As soon as the AI decides to have 1 spearman in a city, you're offense will stop or you will lose many immortals. And i often see spears in city on monarch and emporer so expect them on deity.

Also it would be more difficult to balance the number of axes and immortals, since axes are neccessary to fight the spearman outside the cities, while with Praets it is not that dramatic to run out of axes, praets against axes is unit wise a win and resource wise not a big loss. If the immortals wun out of axes and come across spear, they are lost.

Carn

I Wanted To Just Ask - How Many Pretorians Do U Have At The Finish Of Your Game And Do U Build Any Other Buildings Different From Barracks?

I usually have about two barracks from my original two cities (Rome is one of them). Almost 1/2 of my troops was producing without barracks. There usually plenty of enemy archers out in the open for your troop promotion.


Questions:
1) Do you leave a unit in a newly captured city or just leave the city empty?

I usually leave a cheap unit behide. If you don't, some citizens will be unhappy and refuse to work. Also, after you have captured the Pyramid, you can switch to a government civ that yield one extra happiness per military unit (not sure if there is cap) station in the city.

I finished the game with some 330k something points in 340 BC, and learned quite a lot.

Assuming you didn't reload at all, submit it to the Hall of Fame for the overall top score.

This does not only show that the anarchy disadvantages were programmed badly in the game, but also shows that the number of shields that are gained for chopping a forest are too high. I wonder why the people at Firaxis changed the number of shields that you get for chopping a forest from 0 in civ1 and civ2 to 10 in civ3 and 30 (on normal speed, without production bonusses) in civ4. It's just asking for exploits.

You could still do a lot of damage in a deity game by chop-rushing a whole lot of praetorians and attacking the enemy (even if anarchy was programmed well in the game). There's not much strategy in that in the sense that you don't need to know a lot about the game mechanics and don't have to think a lot to accomplish this. I would like the strategies needed to accomplish something in a Deity game to be a little more complicated.

It seems that in Civ4, forests are a kind of bags of production spread over the map and you need certain technologies to access the bags....

This does not only show that the anarchy disadvantages were programmed badly in the game, but also shows that the number of shields that are gained for chopping a forest are too high.

Well, I think there are many other threads that collectively show that forest chops are worth too much. This one, by itself, is only a small part of the picture. I agree with the conclusion, though. I'd rather see them worth 10 or 15.

Top job Moonsinger, especially with the Anarchy exploit, which is a touch of genius. I too favour the early choprush expansion strategy, but usually I have to stop when my economy goes down the pan.

Well, I think there are many other threads that collectively show that forest chops are worth too much. This one, by itself, is only a small part of the picture. I agree with the conclusion, though. I'd rather see them worth 10 or 15.

That true. This thread is not about the value of forest chops. But I think that giving it such a high value would inevitably lead to strategies/methods/exploits that are well... strange.

I don't want to name extreme use of forest chops an exploit because it is completely according to the rules the makers consciously programmed into the game. I just think the forest chop value inevitably leads to whole strategies heavily dependent on chopping forests. Civ should be about more than that.

I think the whole anarchy things needs to be fixed in a patch. The problem is that as game speed gets slower (epic and marathon) the turns for anarchy increase but the turns required to wait between civic swaps sttays the same. The number of turns you have to wait inbetween each swap needs to be increased for slower game settings. It is an interesting stratagy though. I just don't think it is fully legit as if you think about it could a government really co-ordinate armies if it doesn't exist. At best you would have one faction saying march East and another faction saaying march West. Thats real anarchy for ya.

Anyway it is good to see some people out there with some principals. Even though you are 'liberating' the AIs people you are not killing them. I realise it is only a game and that the different coloured faces don't have feelings but I try to encourage everyone to play a few games now and then as if it was completely real. It puts a real spin on the game and can even lead to discoveries of new stratagies (ignored for their apparent weakeness) which can then be applied to a game that is treated as a game.

Hawkeye

I hate people that go on about violece in PC games. There are many violent games out now such as Civ that do have a sutle anti-war message in them. Just in having the non-war victory conditions such as space race and culture. The only games I think are in any way bad are ones such as medal of honour that over glorify events such as D-Day.

First time poster. I rarely have problems with gaming, but civ 4 is tough at diety, so I came here to discuss strategy.

This is a great article Moonsinger. I tried your strat, but ran into some problems. I know it will work, but it hasn'y for me yet. I am able to follow the advice well until I get to this part:

"* Step #15: Declare war and start eliminating your nearest civ. Unless they have axemans (they rarely do at this point)"

Here is where I have the first problem. There is no way possible to research all the way to iron without the other civs having axemen. As soon as I attack...or most likely when I get attacked with only 6 or 7 Praetoreans built spread over 4 cities I usually face a stack of 2-3 archers, 3-4 spearmen, and 4-8 axemen coming at me. If I focus my forces at some sort of choke point the AI sends chariots to destroy my economy and cut my roads. The only thing I have been able to do is find a jungle covered hill to sit on and pounce on stacks of invaders when they try to bypass it in the open. Problem is a Praetorean does not win every battle with axemen, swordsmen, or even archers.

"* Step #15: If your citizens complain, ignore them. If your enemy begs for peace, ignore them. Keeps the war going until they are eliminated? In the mean time, continue to rush more praetorians by chopping down the forests. If you run out of your own forests, move to the new recently captured city forests."

Here is the second problem. I have chopped every forest down by this point. And the city I managed to capture had no forests either. The AI is busy improving terrain faster than me. So I am left with a city draining my economy with no culture and not producing much of anything except inflation. There is very little forest left by this point so the strategy falls apart and the other civs race ahead in tech while I struggle with 10-20% research rate and fall further and further behind.

I just decided to seriously give Civ4 a try about 10 days ago. At the moment, I'm still new at this game.


:lol: 10 days? new to the game? :lol:

Well, I don't know if this is an "exploit" or not. But I do know brilliance when I see it. Anyone who can navigate through the complexity of a game like this and create a novel winning strategy in such a short time is brilliant.

I am truly impressed... :salute:

Here is where I have the first problem. There is no way possible to research all the way to iron without the other civs having axemen. As soon as I attack...or most likely when I get attacked with only 6 or 7 Praetoreans built spread over 4 cities I usually face a stack of 2-3 archers, 3-4 spearmen, and 4-8 axemen coming at me. If I focus my forces at some sort of choke point the AI sends chariots to destroy my economy and cut my roads. The only thing I have been able to do is find a jungle covered hill to sit on and pounce on stacks of invaders when they try to bypass it in the open. Problem is a Praetorean does not win every battle with axemen, swordsmen, or even archers.

Praetorean vs Axeman is no good! Most of the time, the Praetorean would have much less than 50% chance of winning. Since they have both axemen and chariots, I recommend rushing some axemen and spearman for escorting your stack of Praetoreans.

Here is the second problem. I have chopped every forest down by this point. And the city I managed to capture had no forests either. The AI is busy improving terrain faster than me. So I am left with a city draining my economy with no culture and not producing much of anything except inflation. There is very little forest left by this point so the strategy falls apart and the other civs race ahead in tech while I struggle with 10-20% research rate and fall further and further behind.

May I ask what map size are you playing? And what year did you start the war? Try to go to war sooner if you can. Don't wait too long because there won't be much forests left. You may also face a lot of axemen and horse archers at the later day. I also recommend using the number of civs as recommend at the HoF forum here (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/rules.php). If there are too many civs on the map, they would quickly run out of room to expand; therefore, instead of building settler, they would focus on improving their land. Usually on a tiny map, I play against 2 AI civs; 3 for the small map, 4 for the standard map, and 5 for the large map.

Just managed to win a Deity game on a small Pangaea against 3 AI opponents. I did not exploit the anarchy, but I did raze most of the cities. Thanks, Moonsinger, excellent idea, I did enjoy the game winning with 90K score.

At first, I faced plenty of axemen, but I managed to quickly locate and destroy enemy's copper mines. The rest was just to avoid attacking axemen, and let them to attack themselves. When they do, they sometimes win, sometimes lose. If they lose, my damaged praetorians are covered by other healthy units in the stack.

Quite a problem was with the chariots, they used to sneak to my territory, destroy mines and roads, and kill workers. They usually come in pairs, and if I attack one, and I win, my unit is damaged, and the other chariot kills it. Finally I solved this problem also, by not attacking chariots right away, but waiting for them to go deep inside my territory. Then I could kill them safely.

First, thanks for taking the time to respond. I appreciate it.

"Praetorean vs Axeman is no good! Most of the time, the Praetorean would have much less than 50% chance of winning. Since they have both axemen and chariots, I recommend rushing some axemen and spearman for escorting your stack of Praetoreans."

There are no trees left to rush anything. But as you say it is about 50/50 or so chance. On the slowest game speed it takes about 6 turns in my capital to produce one, but from my furthest city it takes 25 turns. I only had 4 total cities.

"May I ask what map size are you playing? And what year did you start the war? Try to go to war sooner if you can. Don't wait too long because there won't be much forests left. You may also face a lot of axemen and horse archers at the later day. I also recommend using the number of civs as recommend at the HoF forum here. If there are too many civs on the map, they would quickly run out of room to expand; therefore, instead of building settler, they would focus on improving their land. Usually on a tiny map, I play against 2 AI civs; 3 for the small map, 4 for the standard map, and 5 for the large map."

Playing a small map with 4 opponents. I didn't start the war though. I got attacked very early in the game, I think I had just 6 Praetoreans built and two warriors, but all 4 cities were producing Praetoreans. I don't recall the exact date, but the AI had not built the pyramids yet or it had just built them. I was shuffling the two warriors to the far side of my land and pooling the Praetoreans in the center of the area where I had three civs bordering me. The AI sent a stack of 2 archers, 3 spearmen, and 5 axemen straight at my capitol. There was a jungle hill they had to march around to get to it so I sent the 4 Praetoreans I had stacked to the hill and with roads pulled the unit out of my capitol to join them. The AI attacked this stack with his axemen but kept marching out into the plains tile with his spearmen and archers. I won all 5 battles with the plus 75% I had to defense. The next turn I promoted all my units to level 2 which healed some damage and attacked at partial strength. Even with the level 2 promotions I still lost 2 out of 5 Praetoreans fighting the spearmen and archers, but my capital produced a Praetorean on the next round and the first enemy wave got smashed. The second turn of battle the AI also showed up with two other stacks one had just 2 archers and the other a lone chariot going after my one source of iron. The AI also sent small groups of swordsmen at me alone or in pairs. If I am able to research iron working the AI can easily do it, and it did. All in all, there was a large delay between the first wave and the scattered units the AI sent. Some of my Praetoreans were built during this time and all sent to the front. I sent the warriors to the front as well. By advancing slowly onto defensive terrain only with cleared areas to the sides where I knew the AI had to go thru to get at my land I was able to get a few of the AI's roads cut. It took quite a few turns, but I turned the tide and managed to take a city then another. This ruined my research and sent me negative income. I had units on the map, but not enough to sustain war, so I made peace. I moved out of last place though and I wanted to save killing this guy until I could get techs out of him. Problem was though, I was not able to recover enough to quickly mount an offense. Getting attacked before I was ready killed me, so there was a long dely before I could get to battle number two.

I actually attacked the biggest civ just before AD with the 12 Praetoreans you suggested. It took that long to build that many with no trees around. This was my second war. What little research I was getting I made a line for alphabets I could demand techs if I won. I eliminated the top civ and captured the pyramids, but it took me way too long. I lost a huge stack of units and faced catapaults, it was only a steady stream of fresh units and clinging to defensive terrain that even allowed me a win, that and this civ had no horses. I did manage to end up with 2 level 5 units and 3 level 4 units after it was done, but the other two civs I have not fought are running away with the game.

That brings me up to now. I have all my units to the one side of my land where I just killed off my first opponent and a third civ has just declared war on me. He has knights, crossbowmen, and macemen in a stack of about 15 units. After barely scrapping by against axemen and catapaults I do not know how I will face this new threat. I milked 3 techs just before I made the final kill on the civ I just eliminated, but my best unit is a longbow.

This is when I came here for advice. The AIs have not warred each other at all. Only me. I researched straight for iron, rushed as many UUs as I could, defended myself, eliminated a civ, but I am now out of position with an inferior army, but with lots of promotions, and a large army of sophisticated units in my land.

I guess my biggest question at this point is have you really been fast enough to get to iron, produce 12 UUs and beat the AI to having axemen when you attack? Do I need to start over and try again until I get a map full of forest or do you think the strat is salvagable under a more general condition?

Thanks for your time. It is the weekend and I will see if I can fight it out. If not I restart.

May I suggest a few ideas?
The AI sent a stack of 2 archers, 3 spearmen, and 5 axemen straight at my capitol. There was a jungle hill they had to march around to get to it so I sent the 4 Praetoreans I had stacked to the hill and with roads pulled the unit out of my capitol to join them.
In this case you do not need to send your Praetorians to defend the jungle, it should be a lot better to concentrate them in your capital. With such a large stack the AI would surely attack your capital with a few units, and lose most (maybe even all) of them.

The rest would either retreat or (more likely) go around your capital to destroy your mines and kill workers. Then you can attack, and if successful, retreat the damaged unit to the capital. Of course, you need roads all around your cities.

The AI attacked this stack with his axemen but kept marching out into the plains tile with his spearmen and archers. I won all 5 battles with the plus 75% I had to defense. The next turn I promoted all my units to level 2 which healed some damage and attacked at partial strength.
I think attacking with damaged units was a bad idea. You should have retreated them to the nearest city, and wait until they are completely healed. Especially if you were expecting some new units on the next turn.
my capital produced a Praetorean on the next round and the first enemy wave got smashed.
You could attack with the new unit first (and with some luck get more promotions), and wait a little until your veterans are healed more. There is not too much damage actually that the enemy can cause to your infrastructure in 1 or 2 turns. The worst is probably to destroy a road connecting your cities, then you can lose access to iron in some cities. (A good idea would be to connect them with a double road).

The only valuable improvement on your land is actually the iron mine, but it is usually enough to protect it with an axeman and one or two Praetorians. (In my game, it was quite a fun to watch how the enemy gets smashed, desperately trying to attack them.)

The AI also sent small groups of swordsmen at me alone or in pairs.
Do not send your troops against them, wait until they come to you. :) Take advantage of the roads, on your territory you can move your troops twice as fast, provided that you have roads.

Scattered single Praetorians are an easy prey even for chariots. If you really really need to protect something (like workers chopping forest) against small wandering stacks, send a stack of two praetorians. In this case, if the first praetorian attacks and gets damaged, the second one can cover it while healing. This way you can even get some benefit on promotions.

Also, try to build less cities. More cities - more civic upkeep, which means more time in discovering iron, and less units you can build before you hit negative balance. I think two cities is more than enough, if you discover iron near one of them, don't even bother to build a third city.

"Praetorean vs Axeman is no good! Most of the time, the Praetorean would have much less than 50% chance of winning. Since they have both axemen and chariots, I recommend rushing some axemen and spearman for escorting your stack of Praetoreans."

There are no trees left to rush anything.

The article said you should make axemen before you hook up iron and start producing praetorians. Doing this, you should have 3-4 axemen ready to counter the opponent's axemen.

The real counter to axemen is horse archers, but you probably don't have the technology to make them, and you said yourself that you don't have the production either.

Great Strategy!

I won my first Deity game today (and my second too).

The starting location is realy important. Best is, if you are at the coast, so you can keep your back free. Flood Plains or some food goodies and hills are realy important too.

The last game I did was small with 2 opponents (random pick): Isabella and some Mongol guy.

Most of the time my cities were emty.. lol, at the end, even my capital was conquered.. I didm't realy care.. sent one of my pretorian stacks there and got it back ^^

So thank you. I got a lot of insight in the game mechanics of the early game and the difficuly level.

Score was about 158k. The movie at the end of this victory type is nice :)

Playing a small map with 4 opponents. I didn't start the war though. I got attacked very early in the game, I think I had just 6 Praetoreans built and two warriors, but all 4 cities were producing Praetoreans.

My take on this game is as follows...the aggressive civs are like the wolves and the peaceful/spirtual civs are like the sheeps. In this case, you are the wolf (aggressive and expansive) against a whole world full of sheeps. How can you possibly loss?;) When I started this thread, I fear that someone will laugh at me for exploiting those peaceful AIs. Since my focus on this thread is about winning a first Deity game, I don't mind playing stacking the odd in my favor a little bit by picking peaceful civs as my opponents. I think the only time I could loss this game is when I play against some other wolf that would most likely declare war on me before you have a chance to build up my force. It seems to make sense...the wolf is very territorial; therefore, it would most likely attack other weak wolf before focusing on the surrouding sheeps.;) Therefore, please try not to pick Genghis Khan, Tokugawa, Huayan, or Montezuma in your first Deity game.

I decided to review all of the Deity games I have played so far (guiding Ceasar, Catherine, Washington, and Elizabeth), I see that none of the AI has ever declared war on me. I guess...it probably is because I was playing against peaceful AIs. I think you should try again...this time, 3 AIs on a small map (pick Washington, Isabella, and Gandhi as your opponents). A hour ago, I started another game. I played as Catherine and my starting possition was very poor. I had very few forests to chop but had no problem in building up my force. According to my scouts (I have open border with everyone), my nearest civ (Issabella) has a couple swordmans, a lot of archers and chariots. Egypt has a lot of axemens and America has about 4 axemans. If you want to take a look, here is my save. Hint: by the time, I reach the Egyptian border, I probably have horse archers by then; therefore, have no fear of her horse of axemans.:)

Great Strategy!

I won my first Deity game today (and my second too).

The starting location is realy important. Best is, if you are at the coast, so you can keep your back free. Flood Plains or some food goodies and hills are realy important too.

The last game I did was small with 2 opponents (random pick): Isabella and some Mongol guy.

Most of the time my cities were emty.. lol, at the end, even my capital was conquered.. I didm't realy care.. sent one of my pretorian stacks there and got it back ^^

So thank you. I got a lot of insight in the game mechanics of the early game and the difficuly level.

Score was about 158k. The movie at the end of this victory type is nice :)
Congrats!:goodjob:

"The article said you should make axemen before you hook up iron and start producing praetorians. Doing this, you should have 3-4 axemen ready to counter the opponent's axemen."

There was no copper. Since I did not have archery the only unit I could make was warrior. I did the best I could with the map I had. As instructed I pre chopped as much forest as I could.

"Therefore, please try not to pick Genghis Khan, Tokugawa, Huayan, or Montezuma in your first Deity game."

I didn't. Washington attacked me. I think the strat will work great if you have plenty of trees. I had desert to the north and jungle to the south. I got killed and decided to give it a rest. Thanks for your time, though.

This sucks. Sorry about that.

I didn't. Washington attacked me. I think the strat will work great if you have plenty of trees. I had desert to the north and jungle to the south. I got killed and decided to give it a rest. Thanks for your time, though.

Just try again! May be next time you will have both copper and iron near by.

Since I'm not a really great player (having problems to squeeze out wins even on Noble) - but nevertheless a ambitious one - I tried this strategy on a Noble game and made some adjustments, because map type and game speed suggested that the strategy fully transported to my game wouldn't work.

I was playing on a Custom Continents map, so therefore I built the Pyramids myself (luckily having a stone resource at hand) for running Representation early and therefore boosting research and happiness a bit. So I was only able to start cranking out Praetorians with delay, but that was not bad anyway, since I had to hook up Iron before - and that took a while. Then I was building a mass of Praetorians - when I finally attacked Mansa he had 25 of them to deal with. He couldn't withstand, of course. Next victim was Kublai Khan. I haven't destroyed him wholly yet, but my realm has grown from 2 cities to a recent 13.

The difficulty in playing this strategy on Standard game speed is the shortened span of Anarchy when changing civics. 1 turn doesn't help you much. So I was desperately trying to research Civil Service for courthouses and a Forbidden Palace. It was really scaring - I had 13 cities and was making -30 gpt at 0% research. I was just clinging to the loot I gathered from conquering cities, that saved my game. At one point my treasure was so low that 2 Praetorians got disbanded - but the other 30 could capture another city, the money from it letting me finish Civil Service research. Then I set up a lot of courthouses and finally a Forbidden Palace - and now I can run 60% research and still get +1 gpt even without having a shrine yet. I'm sure I'll defeat my opponents on my continent easily from now on since it is still a long way for the AI to Gunpowder.

I'm sure this wouldn't work on Prince or Monarch, not to speak of Deity. The Praetorian is way overpowered, since it will outmatch almost any unit until the Musketman appears. And even then you can do a lot with a bunch of Praetorians and some Catapults. The Rifleman finally ends Praetorian nightmares, but that is rather a late game tech. I think it is not this good that unique units are so unbalanced. Take the Cossak - overpowered too, I think, but it cannot dominate in such a manner because in most cases Riflemen are available at the Cossak's appearance.

Finally: Nice idea, Moonsinger ! Great plan, great work !

Regards,

Lord Timon

Hey Moonsinger. Impressive strat, thanks for sharing. Early on in the thread the suggestion was made to conquer an entire continent. Someone suggested you gift cities to AI for safe keeping, which as was explained will not work. HOWEVER there is another AI that is more than happy to safekeep cities for you and thats your friendly neighborhood barbarians.

Now I have only played this strategy on Immortal Huge map. 10 AI all settings normal +no cheating. You can find this game of mine in the HoF. It seems to work fine so I Imagine that it will hold up on Diety. Use your strategy and raze cities or leave them undefended, barbarians will take them over/build in its place in no time. If you raze/kill enough AI's on your continent the barbarians should get quite a large stronghold in the void your troops leave behind, thus stopping any other AI from claiming that land. Once all the AI's on your continent are dead you can slowly expand outward from your capitol and reclaim land from the barbarians as much as your economy allows. Everyone is always hating on the barbarians but they may turn out to be your greatest ally! They certainly proved usefull in my games so far! Anyway I'll leave you to play with this for a bit, enjoy!

Optional check boxes: No barbarian
Step #6: Once your city has grown to size 3, chop more forests to rush at least 3 more workers and 2 settlers. When chopping down the forests, I usually chop the furthest ones first. I recommend chopping the forests near the AI border first.


I haven't made it through the whole thread, but 'no barbarians' and 'chop the furthest forest first' isn't civ IMO...and lowers the difficulty of Diety tremendously. Being able to build as many workers as you want without fear of barbarians and sending them off to far away lands to deforest the AI lands & borders is an exploit, not a strategy.

If there are some less abusive game stories on page 3 or 4 of this thread congratulations. Kudos for exploiting no barbarians, chopping far away lands, & anarchy as well. It's just not civ to me.

I haven't made it through the whole thread, but 'no barbarians' and 'chop the furthest forest first' isn't civ IMO...and lowers the difficulty of Diety tremendously.
Agreed.

Being able to build as many workers as you want without fear of barbarians and sending them off to far away lands to deforest the AI lands & borders is an exploit, not a strategy.

If there are some less abusive game stories on page 3 or 4 of this thread congratulations. Kudos for exploiting no barbarians, chopping far away lands, & anarchy as well.

Exploit is awfully strong. The Beta Hall of Fame rules clearly allow no barbarians. Now since you are looking for the fastest wins or the highest scores within the Hall of Fame rules, how exactly is it an exploit to game the system to maximize your score or win date?

It's just not civ to me.
It's definitely civ, just a sillier version of civ. Playing on settler, for example, is still definitely civ. But there's no question it's a ludicrously easy version of civ.

Exploit is awfully strong. The Beta Hall of Fame rules clearly allow no barbarians. Now since you are looking for the fastest wins or the highest scores within the Hall of Fame rules, how exactly is it an exploit to game the system to maximize your score or win date?


Point noted. To be honest I don't think I've ever gone to the HOF page.

To: Timon of Athens, SpikeSpy, walkerjks

Thanks for stopping by and for your kind words.:)


Now I have only played this strategy on Immortal Huge map. 10 AI all settings normal +no cheating. You can find this game of mine in the HoF. It seems to work fine so I Imagine that it will hold up on Diety. Use your strategy and raze cities or leave them undefended, barbarians will take them over/build in its place in no time. If you raze/kill enough AI's on your continent the barbarians should get quite a large stronghold in the void your troops leave behind, thus stopping any other AI from claiming that land. Once all the AI's on your continent are dead you can slowly expand outward from your capitol and reclaim land from the barbarians as much as your economy allows. Everyone is always hating on the barbarians but they may turn out to be your greatest ally! They certainly proved usefull in my games so far! Anyway I'll leave you to play with this for a bit, enjoy!
That's a good idea.:goodjob: However, if you are doing to do this, I think there you may want to watch out for: barbarian axemans.

I haven't made it through the whole thread, but 'no barbarians' and 'chop the furthest forest first' isn't civ IMO...and lowers the difficulty of Diety tremendously. Being able to build as many workers as you want without fear of barbarians and sending them off to far away lands to deforest the AI lands & borders is an exploit, not a strategy.

Actually, it isn't as easy as you think. IMO, a deity win is a deity win, especially for people who are just trying out the deity level.

/golfclap

I guess beating a game like civ with exploits and manipulating gameplay is some kind of an artform - as there seems to be quite a few people who play the game this way. It's an artform that I have little appreciation for.

To me, this is not only a very shallow victory due to exploitation, but it's well outside my perceived spirit of the game.

I can't bring myself to respect players who brag about beating a game like Civ on high difficulty levels when they have to exploit to compete and/or they have to use a certain map, or a certain civ, or need a perfect start.

/shrug

I guess beating a game like civ with exploits and manipulating gameplay is some kind of an artform - as there seems to be quite a few people who play the game this way. It's an artform that I have little appreciation for.

To me, this is not only a very shallow victory due to exploitation, but it's well outside my perceived spirit of the game.

I can't bring myself to respect players who brag about beating a game like Civ on high difficulty levels when they have to exploit to compete and/or they have to use a certain map, or a certain civ, or need a perfect start
A chess world champion once said:

"There are the players who know all the rules of the game.
Then there are some players who know all the rules, but can also spot the exceptions.
And finally, there are some few who can take the exceptions and transform them in new rules - we usually call them genious".

Although I don't like the Praet strategy for myself, I haven't the slightest hesitation to admire the creation of this strategy - it obviously needs to know all the rules of the game, spot an exception, and manage even to create a new rule based on that exception, and that's a genious' work.

/golfclap

I can't bring myself to respect players who brag about beating a game like Civ on high difficulty levels when they have to exploit to compete and/or they have to use a certain map, or a certain civ, or need a perfect start.

/shrug

I can't bring myself to respect players who doesn't respect other players because of the strategy they used.

In small map this strategy works really fine and fast ( even thought I played little bit my own way)...I ended my game in 450BC, but I didn´t gain too high points ( I don´t remember how many, cause I played at my friends place...) I played in Immortal level, normal speed and normal settings...I build 3 cities 6 workers, 3 barracks and then I started to chop pretorians...I had three opponents and lucyly Mansas capital was right next to mine i sended 4 first there and captured it easily...that was the only city I kept...rest I just razed away...Timbuktu had a lot of forests around so it became my pretorian factory...Rest of the game was just pushing out pretorians and killing others...not the usual way I play, but was interesting to try...Pretorian is amazingly good unit...I didn´t lose any against archers nor even axemens...I only attacked with full energy pretorians...I had always about 4-8 them in one stack...I didn´t need to use anarchy part of the srategy or I didn´t need pyramids...But I guess this must became more difficult in bigger maps...

Since I posted this thread, I have learned much. I now can beat deity without chopping the forests (well, I have to clear some forests for farms). I just finished a game on standard map against 6 AIs last night (with patch 1.61, of course). By 10AD, more than 90% of all my forests were still there. It was fun...I couldn't believe my civ was able to research Code of Law within less than 10 turns. Next stop, large and huge map...then I will rewrite this thread.

I have tried this strategy a few times and I must admit that I have run into fatal obstacles. I have therefore a few comments/questions:

* When I first tried on Tiny or small maps I quickly ran out of forests to chop. I was surrounded by my terribly fast expanding neighbours and was choked in a few thousand years. So Tiny and Small isn't necessarily easier.

* I then tried Standard with the opponents that you suggest, Moonsinger, and now I was more lucky. (I must admit, though, that I was chicken enough to start on Immortal) I could chop forests far away from my homeland and keep an impressive production of praetorians going - enough to conquer the Americans and then the Russians, who had the Pyramids. But I lost quite a few of my elite troops conquering a capital with 2 axemen, a number of archers and 60% defense! So how you can avoid running into axemen I don't understand.

* I then looked forward to having the opportunity to change goverments and stay in anarchy for several rounds. But I couldn't make it to more than 2 rounds of anarchy from changing civics and 1 round for changing religion. That left me with 2 rounds out of 5 in which to lose money, and when I ran out of that because of still more advanced enemy city defenders I started losing more praetorians than I could produce - also because all forests left were around my newly conquered cities, which were therefore the only ones to produce with sufficient speed. How can you stay in anarchy more than 2 rounds when you can only change government civ + tribalism/slavery?

* The distance between my culturally poor cities was so big that there were a lot of potential enemy soldiers running around between them, so I had to keep a defense force in most cities to prevent counterattacks from taking my cities after I started a war on the next opponent.

* Some of my cities were so close to the yet neutral opponents that they started revolting and joining the much stronger cultured civ.

* Finally my last opponent had longbowmen, and worse: macemen! Too hard!

* And for the final blow: One enemy couldn't be conquered - his last city was on a small island. Even though you start on Pangaea, there can still be extra islands. And without income I couldn't research sailing (and much less astronomy - way out!), so there was no way to get there.

* All this took a terribly long time with moving praetorians around - quite boring! I will stick to more varied games on a lower level from now on, but I would like to hear I was unlucky or that there are some tricks that I am not aware of.

sorry, I posted this twice.

I have tried this strategy a few times and I must admit that I have run into fatal obstacles. I have therefore a few comments/questions:

* When I first tried on Tiny or small maps I quickly ran out of forests to chop. I was surrounded by my terribly fast expanding neighbours and was choked in a few thousand years. So Tiny and Small isn't necessarily easier.

* I then tried Standard with the opponents that you suggest, Moonsinger, and now I was more lucky. (I must admit, though, that I was chicken enough to start on Immortal) I could chop forests far away from my homeland and keep an impressive production of praetorians going - enough to conquer the Americans and then the Russians, who had the Pyramids. But I lost quite a few of my elite troops conquering a capital with 2 axemen, a number of archers and 60% defense! So how you can avoid running into axemen I don't understand.

* I then looked forward to having the opportunity to change goverments and stay in anarchy for several rounds. But I couldn't make it to more than 2 rounds of anarchy from changing civics and 1 round for changing religion. That left me with 2 rounds out of 5 in which to lose money, and when I ran out of that because of still more advanced enemy city defenders I started losing more praetorians than I could produce - also because all forests left were around my newly conquered cities, which were therefore the only ones to produce with sufficient speed. How can you stay in anarchy more than 2 rounds when you can only change government civ + tribalism/slavery?

* The distance between my culturally poor cities was so big that there were a lot of potential enemy soldiers running around between them, so I had to keep a defense force in most cities to prevent counterattacks from taking my cities after I started a war on the next opponent.

* Some of my cities were so close to the yet neutral opponents that they started revolting and joining the much stronger cultured civ.

* Finally my last opponent had longbowmen, and worse: macemen! Too hard!

* And for the final blow: One enemy couldn't be conquered - his last city was on a small island. Even though you start on Pangaea, there can still be extra islands. And without income I couldn't research sailing (and much less astronomy - way out!), so there was no way to get there.

* All this took a terribly long time with moving praetorians around - quite boring! I will stick to more varied games on a lower level from now on, but I would like to hear I was unlucky or that there are some tricks that I am not aware of.

Check out the logs HoF section (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/) for more info.

But I lost quite a few of my elite troops conquering a capital with 2 axemen, a number of archers and 60% defense! So how you can avoid running into axemen I don't understand.

With proper promotion, Praetorians can easily scare axemen to dead (I mean axeman wouldn't dare to attack your stack). From the start, about half of my Praetorians will be promoted strength+shock+raider, the rest will have city raider III promotion then shock or cover. By the time axemen show up, I would have a hand full of Praetorians with shock. Usually after elminating the first two civs, I will have Praetorians with shock and city raiderII+. Oh boy, they can take on any city defended by axeman.

So I decided to try (some of this: I'm on the 1.61 patch so the anarchy thing doesnt work.) strategy out last night, after I finished my first Immortal-quechua-rush the other day with a Domination Victory.

But as it says I settled on spot and started to explore with my warrior. A handfull tiles away from Rome was a hut - and guess what the warrior got from it?????????????????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!

- BRONZEWORKING!
Talk about being lucking.. ;-)

But anyways, I can understand Veteran13's concern with meeting axemen. In my game they also started to appear - not stacks o' doom but just one or two in some of Catherine's (bigger) cities. Also she started to make swordsmen! But now I can see from your last reply, Moonsinger, that you promote some Praets with shock - I'll have to remember that.

But since Catherine wasn't runing me over with axemen my 10 Praets have now destroyed her iron and copper deposit-cities, and are moving forward on the path of destruction...

Further questions:
Now, I decided to attack Catherine which at the time was the leading civ. Washington was in front of me, I was last.
Was it the right decision to go for Catherine-the stronger? Or should I have taken Washington first-the weaker first?

I have chopped all the forrests in the nearby by now. I have a lot of flood plains around Rome - would it be a good idea to farm it and use it for pop rushing?
Currently it takes 14 turns to produce a praetorian, which I think is rather slow -isn't it? (And the need for pop-rushing thus even bigger).

Well I just finished a domination win on immortal, small pangea with Ceasar. It wasn't all that hard although I had a bit of luck in getting iron in my capital. It was the only city I built until the end, and all I needed. I got lucky and got declared on early right about the time I had my first praet built. From there it was nothing but rax and praets until I could build libraries. For me, the main trick to winning like this is resource denial, and resource taking. Praets, catapults, war elephants, and spearman are enough to take over the whole map. Two each praets and spears were enough to take out any mine, by the time the enemy had maces and longbows, it was too late for them, I was double their size/production.

For me, the main trick to winning like this is resource denial, and resource taking.

I think the main trick to this sort of win is choosing small pangaea....

I think the main trick to this sort of win is choosing small pangaea....

I think when he said "the main trick to winning like this..." he meant the main trick to winning on a small pangaea, so then what he said would make sense.;)

i haf trouble hooking myself up with the resources i need because the AI spread really fast, leaving me with nothing.

i am now trying this strategy and so far it's being great! it's 3970BC and my first goody hut gave me bronze working!:D great job moonsinger!:goodjob:

Shock and cover? Since you may be facing horse archers, wouldn't you might as well get combat promotions instead?

As to those that doubt this strategy: even if you don't shoot for it straight away, I've seen it in action in multiplayer. Of course, with adaptations.

Since I posted this thread, I have learned much. I now can beat deity without chopping the forests (well, I have to clear some forests for farms). I just finished a game on standard map against 6 AIs last night (with patch 1.61, of course). By 10AD, more than 90% of all my forests were still there. It was fun...I couldn't believe my civ was able to research Code of Law within less than 10 turns. Next stop, large and huge map...then I will rewrite this thread.

Did you already rewrite it? Will you?

I'd like to see experiences with warlords. On the one hand you could try to handle barbarians easily with the Great Wall, on the other hand the AI acts smarter and faster.

I am quite surprised some people say it would still work, do you refer to domination or the city raze type?

So does this shtickt work on Warlords? Quite clever