Strategy on higher difficulty

[Browd]

Yeah, you've pretty clearly underinvested in military -- 1 composite bow (easily upgraded to x-bow) is not going to hold off multiple Carthaginian riflemen, cannons, etc. But the root cause seems to be undersized cities, and corresponding poor science rate.

Looks like you've left your cities on production focus for way too long. At this point, with full Tradition, your capital should be at or near 30 pop, but it's only at 18, and your other long-founded cities are undersized. And most are set on production focus, so your science specialists aren't being worked. Your overall beaker rate is 399 with 4 policies in Rationalism (through Free Thought). Just assigning your science specialists in all cities. and your 4 guild specialists (you weren't working guild slots either, so your culture rate is poor), boosted your beaker rate by 22% to 490. Still not great, but far better. I see you built the Great Library -- although you can get it on Immortal (as you did), the sacrifices are often too great -- working production tiles to bang out GL means little to no growth for too many turns in the early game.

 

[LordBalkoth]

Finn, I went ahead and played about two hours of your game, which took me from turn 263 to 288. Both the Aztecs and Carthage attacked, I drove them both off. I recorded the session and am working on uploading it so you can watch if you'd like. May need to leave it "processing" overnight, FRAPS file is 200 GB.

Funnily enough, your REAL enemy is not Carthage or the Aztecs -- their tech is about equal and you can pull ahead. The real problem is France who is currently 12 technologies ahead, I think. At like 77% of technology to 64%, something like that. They have a lot of culture and went full Rationalism.

This is probably still winnable, I think, just really need to amp up your science. Will continue this "playthrough" in more videos if you'd like.

Looks like you've left your cities on production focus for way too long. At this point, with full Tradition, your capital should be at or near 30 pop, but it's only at 18, and your other long-founded cities are undersized.

Yeah, this is a big thing I mention in the video. Cities just don't have enough food and/or haven't been growing due to production focus.

 

[Finnagain]

Wow. I can barely believe the level of help you folks are affording me here. I can't thank you enough for looking into this. I think you folks have put more effort into me improving than I have to this point.

 

[LordBalkoth]

First attempt to process video overnight bugged out. Second attempt is about 35% done and will take another 4-5 hours apparently. Will upload after that, may not be up until tomorrow (hopefully tonight).

 

[ShakaKhan]

Kind of surprised no one has hit on this yet...

From personal experience, the biggest difference between surviving and ultimately succeeding on higher difficulty levels compared to <emperor levels has nothing to do with BPT, power ranking and even military potency... It's all about diplomacy and more specifically, keeping AIs busy with each other. Bribe them to fight each other. The biggest key to high level play is to find additional resources or alternate sources of happiness so you can use your resources to bribe civs to fight each other. This is how some of the higher level LPers win science victories on deity pre-300 without ever having a military more than 2 Cbows and a warrior or two. The best way to deal with Carthage's dozens of GWbombers is not to figure out some magical way to get AA guns earlier but rather to have them bombing someone else. As they do, that number will drop from 12-14 to 5-6 when they return to encounter you. Additionally, you'll be more powerful when they do come back. Finally, by having their military fully committed to engagements on the other side of the world, you can swoop in and cripple their infrastructure through pillaging or even taking a city or two (tangent: if you can capture a city, immediately gift it (or use it in an additional war bribe) to an aggressive or powerful civ- this will ensure that the target civ and the new city owner are busy with each other for a loooong time.)

Ultimately, you can drive yourself crazy with micromanaging tiles and build que orders in an attempt to find the absolute most efficient method getting to key technologies a few turns earlier. You can also have target dates for cities to reach certain sizes, but the map plays such a huge factor in this that achieving these target dates may not be realistic. Diplomacy is the answer to all these problems.

 

[Finnagain]

Shakakhan, I am sure that you are correct. That all makes total sense to me. But here is a cold hard fact that I will have to deal with. It does not sound like fun for me. I like exploring and cultivating cities, mostly. I just kinda got good at it, so I kept bumping up the difficulty. I may be up against a wall unless I want to ACTUALLY improve. Heh.

That said, I took the advice of Browd and LordBalkoth. I started a new game and I paid closer attention to science and food than I typically do. I did not go for Great Library, but I still got over 600 beakers by the same date. Go figure.

 

[LordBalkoth]

Kind of surprised no one has hit on this yet...

Technically, one of the first things I do in the video is get another Civ involved in the war...and I get a second Civ involved as well a few turns later.

has nothing to do with BPT

It absolutely has to do with BTP. My first Immortal win, I lost the race to a Spaceship by a few turns, reloaded about 50 turns back, and replayed it while engaging the runaway with a major war to tried to keep them busy. Managed to win like 3 turns before I had previously lost.

...that was at turn 440. Funnily enough, I was so proud of myself at the time!

And on Deity, if you don't win by turn 350 or so, someone will launch. And you can easily lose in the 325-350 range in many games.

In other words, no, you don't need to pull off the turn 225 Science victories, but you do need to majorly focus on your science unlike on lower difficulties. I'm honestly not sure if the AI will even launch on Emperor or lower unless there's a science runaway.

And you'll note the very first post of this thread was complaining about GWB on turn 260...aka, Finn was not used to teching as fast as they should be.

It's all about diplomacy and more specifically, keeping AIs busy with each other. Bribe them to fight each other.

This can sometimes backfire, though, if you bribe Shaka constantly and he winds up taking over 75% of the world and runs away. Have to be careful.

Ultimately, you can drive yourself crazy with micromanaging tiles and build que orders in an attempt to find the absolute most efficient method getting to key technologies a few turns earlier.

No one in this thread was talking about micromanaging stuff. Hell, I definitely didn't micromanage in my video. But there's a difference between "micromanage to get research labs 2 turns earlier" and "size 20 capital as tradition on turn 265." The former isn't needed, the latter is bad news.

That said, I took the advice of Browd and LordBalkoth. I started a new game and I paid closer attention to science and food than I typically do.

Good work! Video 70% processed!

 

[Redaxe]

You have to get Flight before you can get AA guns. Cannot avoid it. Which is rather annoying.

Yes you are correct - sorry about that It's been a while since I've fired up Civ 5.

Ummm if you are behind on Flight as in your current situation the only option I can think of is to fortify Riflemen or Great War Infantry on Fort tiles in rough terrain. If you can give them a morale promotion and cover with an adjacent medic that may be enough to survive bombings long enough for you to catch up.
Arsenals in Cities can help as well. But really if your locked in this situation it can be very hard to get out of as the AI will just keep hammering you until attrition wears you out.

You can try diplomacy to change things. There is also a cheat where you can in certain circumstances force an AI to make peace with you in the trade screen. I have used it on occasion and it might be an option for you.

ShakaKhan makes some good points about diplomacy, it certainly is a valuable, even essential tool but really you cannot rely on it with 100% certainty. Ignoring your military and assuming you can just buy off AIs can be a recipe for disaster.
Firstly one civ may become a powerhouse and a total runaway and eat up all opposition. What will you do then when he turns against you?
Sometimes you have to fight an AI neighbour whether you want to or not. It can be a case of France not attacking the NAZI German army when they annexed the Rhineland. If the French had of responded the outnumbered German army would have been routed and most likely Hitler would have lost much of his political momentum and he would have been ridiculed and humiliated.
Instead France did nothing and allowed the NAZIS to remilitarise which ended up being disastrous for them. Anyway that is a simple analogy of how you may have to respond to AI aggression.

There is also a fairly common scenario where you bribe them to declare war for 10 turns then afterwards they make peace and then attack you anyway.
The safest way to avoid being gobbled up is to invest in military and in a decent economy and science so you can afford a modern military.
It doesn't need to be huge. For instance a Great General can plant a citadel in a strategic position and that can damage AIs as they try to manuoever units around. Then all you need is some range units to pick of the AIs and 1 or 2 melee units that have a high strength rating to sit on the Forts and absorb damage.

 

[LordBalkoth]

Ummm if you are behind on Flight as in your current situation the only option I can think of is to fortify Riflemen or Great War Infantry on Fort tiles in rough terrain.

He didn't have Great War Infantry (and if you're worried about war you'll get Flight before Replaceable Parts anyway most likely).

Riflemen will get torn to shreds by planes...or should, at least. Though the AI tends to pick idiotic promotions.

Arsenals in Cities can help as well.

Which is what I wound up doing. Rush bought an Arsenal since he had the Skyscraper policy and used the city + crossbowman to snipe enemy cannons until I could get some artillery out and there. Even then I was having to use LoS to hide the artillery so they wouldn't get bombed to smithereens.

You can try diplomacy to change things. There is also a cheat where you can in certain circumstances force an AI to make peace with you in the trade screen. I have used it on occasion and it might be an option for you.

Say what? What are you even taking about?

In legitimate turns, an AI won't accept for 15 turns on Standard if they went to war with you due to an agreement with another AI, I believe. And bribes guarantee war for 10 turns.

Ignoring your military and assuming you can just buy off AIs can be a recipe for disaster.

Potentially, but the idea is that by the time you might need a military you'll be far enough ahead in tech that your Infantry will annihilate their Riflemen.

 

[Sessy]

what's all this warmongering nonsense? this game is called civilization, why can't we adopt more civilized play styles?

I find in general the higher you move up the difficulty, the more attention you need to pay to science. diplomacy should be manageable by everyone, and even on low difficulties it's nice to get the AIs busy, but science is the core thing that makes or breaks the game. once you have a sufficient lead in science not much else matters, you can get better buildings, more wonders, better units, and better yields from cities....

this and the need to shun away from building too many wonders. take the AIs if necessary, but when only a handful of GL attempts on deity have been successful, you'd be better off building settlers. (I wonder how many fellow fanatics have built GL...)

 

[LordBalkoth]

Well, combining the mp4 files bugged out again overnight, just uploading the damn things to YouTube. So you'll get three separate videos in a playlist, sorry. Could have had this up two days ago if I hadn't been trying to turn them into one video.

 

[LordBalkoth]

Here you go, hope it helps!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dQ3YhAAJ50&list=PLoXdIxCtXxWczTfWXrNlL0WXSI-Le2jAV

 

[mbbcam]

Nice to see you keeping the Peddro faith going, mbbcam!

Yes, I know, I seem like a fanboy . But the video is a hoot, as well as being instructive. I hope other people find it helpful.

 

[Finnagain]

@LordBalkoth
Ok, I watched the vid. That was more helpful than I imagined it would be. I have never invited an AI to make war before. That makes sense.

I laughed at your gentle jibes. I had settlers late because the map was all about settling the new world, and I intended to settle it while I could.

Thanks for the instruction.

 

[LordBalkoth]

Glad it helped! And sounds like your new game is going better.

I'll throw out the offer that I'd be more than willing to continue that game and record it if you want, should be a lot smoother now that I've figured the video stuff out. Guessing you'll want to focus more on the new game, mentioning it just in case you're interested (I personally found it a lot more interesting than just starting a new game).

 

[consentient]

Yes, I know, I seem like a fanboy . But the video is a hoot, as well as being instructive. I hope other people find it helpful.

Yeah, me too. He's a nice guy too, replied to my gushing email

 

[Redaxe]

Say what? What are you even taking about?

Sometimes in the diplomacy screen you can ask to negotiate peace and the trade screen comes up with the 10 turn cease-fire. Just click "accept" and not "what will make this deal work".

It doesn't happen all the time, can someone confirm please?

 

[beetle]

It doesn't happen all the time, can someone confirm please?

My experience is that if you can negotiate at all, then white peace is an option. I am pretty it was not that when I was playing GnK, and it might not always been that way in BNW, but I have no idea when it changed. I would swear that the computer used know better when it was losing too.

 

[Redaxe]

My experience is that if you can negotiate at all, then white peace is an option. I am pretty it was not that when I was playing GnK, and it might not always been that way in BNW, but I have no idea when it changed. I would swear that the computer used know better when it was losing too.

Yeah It's bizarre I don't know when it started either although I only really got into Civ 5 after BNW

 

[consentient]

Beetle is correct. If they are willing to make peace, then white peace is an option. Although I almost never settle for that. I want GPT to buy more units to crush the next victim. Ha ha!