Deity Challenge 1 - Russia, Pangaea

im just now getting to this thread. gonna try it tonight. gotm53 goes up tomorrow (mine are always easy diffs so if you need some stress relief in a cake win you're in for a treat, haha).

ive avoided the spoilers and general map knowledge and the return of snarzberry is making it exceedingly difficult. i'd love to read his win details. it also doesnt help that people are saying 'deity is hard but his one is harder'. i already struggle seriously at deity so ~150 turns will be all ill need to see the forgone conclusions.

It's a hard map, but it's hard for the AI too. This is the closest I've come to winning a Deity game. It's a great learning experience: I've gotten better at timing, at defense, at espionage, at diplomacy. I still need to work on attention to detail, especially in city management. I also need to figure out the four-city opening – did a terrible job in my replay, need to try that again.

Regarding diplomatic victory:

Tabarnak said:

I'm gonna try a diplo win

Reasons behind it :

Spoiler :

-I'm not too tall, generating quite a good amount of gold thanks to my aggressive play through the main land
-Checked Snarz's spoiler(so i know that some cs are well protected west of me)
-No civs have flew away so far, powers are well balanced at the moment. Suleiman is resisting to Attila pretty well making cs a chance to survive
-This is not a game were Darius can throw a spaceship as soon as turn 240 and a Ghengis taking every cs on the map(i'm looking at you GOTM #51, this game is easier imo)

Well i'm pretty far away from this so i can change my mind since that i need Plastics before moving on. But i think that a Diplo win is pretty possible right now.

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Yeah, science's younger and uglier sister. I always forget there are 4 victory types and not 3. Oh, wait... there are 5!

Anyways...

Moriarte said:

I decided that it's less painful to die sooner rather than later

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Mother Russia is kind to you, it seems. Great job so far!

Hammer Rabbi said:

it also doesnt help that people are saying 'deity is hard but his one is harder'. i already struggle seriously at deity so ~150 turns will be all ill need to see the forgone conclusions.

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Try not to pay attention. Everyone's game is different and there are way too many factors that affect the actual difficulty. Personally I think it's easier than GotM51, although I didn't play that one. However, Tab did and he agrees. Good luck anyway! Keep us posted.

@Moriarte :

Speaking of my replay:


One problem I keep running into: not enough money to cover research agreements and military upgrades, sometimes not enough for either. It's not just this map, I've been struggling with this in general. I used to have trouble with happiness management too, but that seems to have gotten easier in G+K.

meh, quit at t90 but it was for a surprise response. ill try it again, but not much different.

Have played up to about t100 three times now, mainly just to compare starts. So far I've not got anything that would remotely lead to a win.

First strat was peaceful except 1 war against the guy everyone hated (Songhai), went combination of science/military. However Songhai ended up dominating Japan and then came for me with his more advanced units bearing down on my cities, and already way behind in tech there was no real way to win.

Second strat I just went all out war and declared on everyone, using the money from peace deals and the 'trading for cash then declaring war' exploit to buy more units. Even with the exploit I still couldn't get enough units to actually take an enemy city and was so ridiculously behind on tech I abandoned the game.

Third strat I went all out peace, rushed for the National college (got it turn 63), hid behind the mountains, rushed for education. I became friends with Japan, Ethiopia and Austria. Japan declared on Songhai, so I ended up doing the same in the hopes of strengthening the friendship (common enemy). However Japan backstabbed me and then shortly Oda made peace with Sonhai. I ended up with both the Japanese and Songhai armies attacking me. Even though I was holding them off, they were both miles ahead in tech and I couldn't see a way of ever getting peace out of them.

Fourth time I'll try peace again, this time settling second city a bit earlier so I don't have to rush buy library and also not pissing off Japan (who was settled close to my borders last game before I settled 2nd city).

This is definitely the toughest map I've ever played. Much harder than the deity GoTM

i did a 2nd try with worse results, haha.

Oh. My. Word. I'm up to turn 60 so far and many many things have happened (btw how do I include a screenshot? Is it a print screen job?

Wow Moriarte, very impressive.

Early aggression was clearly the way to go.

In my game i have kept playing, but i don't know why.

I am still behind by a huge amount in everything, and Askia attacked me again.
He's got tons of triplanes and GWBs, and has almost completely eaten up Japan.
And i have no oil.

I'm done. I'm too far behind in tech to compete, he's killing units constantly.

I cannot handle deity.

I also cannot handle the concept of the AI being allowed unlimited happiness so they can settle every tiny spot of land available so they get 30 cities that grow like weeds.
Really, i realize i just suck too much for deity, fair enough.
But the way the AI gets to cheat is just ********.

ense7en said:

I also cannot handle the concept of the AI being allowed unlimited happiness so they can settle every tiny spot of land available so they get 30 cities that grow like weeds.
Really, i realize i just suck too much for deity, fair enough.
But the way the AI gets to cheat is just ********.

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One thing you can try is to use your standing army, random warriors/pikes and such, to block settling locations on your borders so no ai plops a city right on top of you. Remember at deity they will take any location no matter how craptastic it is, so a well placed unit that isn't doing anything atm can save headaches. Plus you're doing the AI a favour as they don't realise the diplo hit they will take with you by settling there

Good game Moriarte, interesting how slow they teched in your game. In mine Atilla was at 99% for some time and could have built the spaceship easily if he didn't have his heart set on nuclear holocaust. I think he rolled 2 civs very early as I never met Korea or Siam.

I took the lead around t.170 and was ahead most of the time. Maria was strong, but the rest of the bunch were pretty slow. She never married a single CS, i think, which seems odd, to be honest. I payed my only buddy Attila 4 times to pick on neighbors. He sucessfully killed Siam and couple Suleiman's cities, but failed to move further. I really hoped he could weaken Maria, but he failed at that. (or maybe he didn't?) On and just before the turn i launched, Maria completed 2 spaceparts. I guess she could launch around t.300.

I am impressed how your cunning diplomatic approach worked, Snarzberry. Well done!

Played some more turns to 163.

When i came back on game, both Oda and Haile DoWed me I was in a pretty bad shape until...i finally made peace with Askia with a big stack of 2500 gold With near 4000 in bank it was time to rush buy a couple of crossbowmen back to life and a couple of longswordmen.

I easily pull off Haile and joined my troups near Tokyo. With 45 , Kyoto will not be easy. I'm annexing Taghaza and Jenne. With the ironworks online my capital can now build things more rapidly. I teched Astro before Steel for 2 observatories(1 rush bought in cap).



Some turns later i both made peace with Haile and Austria(no gimmies). Askia joined the war against Oda and we successfully killed their units despite the Great Wall. With some calucations i let him down the city in the red so i can finish it easily. The RA is finished from Attila(signed new one) bringing down form 8 to 3 turns of completion Sci theory. I'm gonna open Rationalism in 3 turns(finally!).

Now with 8 cities(2 puppets), what i like here is that all my cities are on some juicy spots. I have a lot of ressources to sell so im swimming in cash too. And i'm only 3% away from the tech leader.

stop with the deity games with mountain starts. that is not realistic

Well on my 4th attempt I finally got a start I was happy with and cruised to a T255 diplomacy victory.

My start was 3 city tradition, NC around turn 70 off two cities, 3rd city settled the same turn NC finished. Got to education around turn 105 ish, bulbed astronomy with oxford and hit renaissance a turn before my 7th policy (around 115 I believe). After completing rationalism left side I went patronage, aesthetics and got philanthropy with about 10 turns to go.

Managed to stay friendly with everyone the whole game except Askia, who declared on me around turn 150ish (forget the exact timing); by then I had gatlings and I fought him back without a problem before Japan, Ethiopia and Austria triple declared him all on the same turn, Japan got the lions share of his land so the rest of the game was mostly spent bribing Japan to fight Austria and Ottomans instead of me, and saving gold.

I had research agreements with Japan, Austria, Huns and Ethiopia for most of the game. Siam too but they got taken out by the huns early. I never had the cash to rush buy any of the science buildings except for a couple of universities early so I was slowed down a bit by having to slow build them; I settled 4 academies before hitting plastics and used two GS to rush the UN tech. Had to slow build the UN at the end, which took about 13 turns, since I had used my only great engineer (pisa) on a manufactury tile improvement, this in hindsight wasn't a very good idea.

Ethiopia provided me with a rather nice religion (Cathedrals, +2 happiness per garden, desert folklore). I did pop a faith rune and got an unexpected pantheon however, for which I took monument to the gods, which helped with the NC.

I got all the national wonders (except temple) + pisa, didn't go for any other world wonders.

By the end of the game I had sold just about every building except the gold and food producing ones, and sold my 170ish gold per turn to the AIs; had about 11k to spend on the final turn which was more than enough to get all the city states given most of them were already friends (pledge + aesthetics combo).

Screenshots:

Just finished attempt #3.

Domination victory at turn 268.

Both Maria and Attila were just 1 SS part away from a science victory.

Very stressful game, and maybe the hardest map I have ever played.

The new patch is just so great. The only unit i still find very overpowered is the Stealth bomber, but it is a very late unit now.

In the beginning it was hard to even survive. Japan was almost impossible to hold off. I build like 10 forts, and every general I got I had to use for citadels.

Thanks for a great map witrh a new great patch. This game is now the best one ever made.

Also, Maria was a power house. She would have had a science victory before turn 250 if I had not rushed-attacked her.

And talking about attacking Maria... the thing also made this map so very hard was the very narrow passage leading to her empire, where she had a ton of battleships, air units etc. And my air units could not reach her cities! (She also got a ton of mobile sams..)

How I could enter the passage? Well, I used my three generals to build citadels to get closer... Then payed Attila, Haile, Askia all to DoW Maria...

One more thing, I read posts where people claim the lead before turn 200, without even attacking the computer opponents! Lol, that is either very impressive or strange. To leave the computer opponents alone in diety and be a score leader should be absolutly impossible unless you abuse something.

Old Peter said:

One more thing, I read posts where people claim the lead before turn 200, without even attacking the computer opponents!

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Are you sure about this?

If you're referring to my game, i did capture 7 cities, which i mentioned in an earlier post ..