Let's play some deity 4

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This is just plain ridiculous. I can not even achieve this at anything higher than noble, and you do it on deity?
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The two relevant negative aspects of deity are the barbs and the increased maintenance and due to luck the barbs were no factor in my game. The positive part of deity is just now kicking in. Lots more gold from trades and deity AIs research much faster allowing early trades for the big economic techs. I mean think about calendar - when does the AI get it and start trading happy resources? Your economy absolutely takes off once the happy starts coming in even if you don't have calendar yourself yet.

There seems to be some confusion about Deity and "rexing"
The hard part here is not the upkeep, connect your cities and grab some commerce tiles..you will be fine

It is either the barbs or the AI expansion speed, either cos one of those 2 will usually hunt you fast ~~
If no barbs the AIs are close to your precious spotted city spots, and if you loose the race you might be left with nothing cos wonders go fast too.

strijder20 said:

...
This is just plain ridiculous. I can not even achieve this at anything higher than noble, and you do it on deity?
......

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Practice rexing by playing Hannibal on Archipelago maps:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=326230

I learnt from several HoF players that taught me how to use that tactic to win on Immortal, and I was then able to win every Immortal game I played as Hannibal. The link is only a noble game though to see how much more I could rex.

Hannibal gets FIN for more , CHA for more happiness (I would chop both the Stonehenge and GLH in my games, then rex like a maniac), and Cothons add an extra trade route which brings in loads of extra commerce on top of the GLH.

The normal Hannibal strategy is GLH + Collosus plus Stonehenge as an optional (really helps immensely with the extra happiness and free border pops), and tech to Compass ASAP, and use it as trade bait. Build a Cothon first in every city, plus a granary, library and courthouse, and thats all you need for every city to start making a huge profit. Settle near as many seafoods as you can get and later on use Sids Sushi Co.

Its more powerful than Darius is, but it requires an archipelago map.

Mylene said:

There seems to be some confusion about Deity and "rexing"
The hard part here is not the upkeep, connect your cities and grab some commerce tiles..you will be fine

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The hard part here is playing as Joao on diety - You dont have either FIN or ORG to help you with rexing. You dont have any early economic buildings like Ziggurats, Rathouse or Cothons to recover your economy after a rex. Proper rexing on higher difficulties is rarely ever done with anyone other than Darius or Hannibal, and by proper we are talking about 16+ cities in the BCs without crashing your economy.

You can see from Grashopa's pics that rexing with Joao on Deity is not 'just fine'. It definitely isnt in any of my attempts either - even with all my cities built on the coast for instant trade routes with GLH, my Science slider is down to 20% after just 8 cites.

Joao despite his traits has never been a recomended civ to play for rexing, not even on difficulties lower than Deity. He is actually far weaker for this purpose than even Holy Rome is.

720ad:

vranasm said:

hihi...exactly my thoughts ;-)

looking at the start... it's another one of those tricky ones imo. Going WB doesn't look worth the effort, otoh going worker first with exp 2h city tile and another 3h doesn't look exactly bright too, since I would aim for AH.

tststs... dunno... how about settler first (nothing like crashing right away)? :-D

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With those traits surely mining those pigs hills works just as well. So you can go worker first and research wheel/pottery.

You can see from Grashopa's pics that rexing with Joao on Deity is not 'just fine'. It definitely isnt in any of my attempts either - even with all my cities built on the coast for instant trade routes with GLH, my Science slider is down to 20% after just 8 cites.

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You forgot to settle the overseas trade routes first. And you need to make sure you get colossus / MC for trades (currency/calendar) so don't settle until you know you will get it.

275 AD Oh my

Hehe

@ Grashopa : hehe INDEED!!!!

oops, that should have been a PM

holy crap, t126 +350 economy, that is disgusting

The AI definitely does not handle this map script well. Its all one continent so the AI attacks by sending 1 move troops on a 30 tile jaunt around the ice when they are separated from their enemy by 1 water tile. They also don't use a galley for their settler instead settling a row of cities down the ice attempting to get to the land which is 4 tiles from their capital across the water.

Grashopa said:

The two relevant negative aspects of deity are the barbs and the increased maintenance and due to luck the barbs were no factor in my game. The positive part of deity is just now kicking in. Lots more gold from trades and deity AIs research much faster allowing early trades for the big economic techs. I mean think about calendar - when does the AI get it and start trading happy resources? Your economy absolutely takes off once the happy starts coming in even if you don't have calendar yourself yet.

Click to expand...

This small paragraph says alot. I've been playing EMP for a while now and one thing I find difficult is looking at walkthroughs or shadows games like yours and wondering why I am not getting similar results. I assume I am doing something wrong. But the AI never has any gold to trade or they take forever to hook up their resources.

I guess my concern in moving up is that I won't be able to achieve a tech lead which, because of my subpar warring skills, is a must when I go for war.