How to beat Diety?

The "No Settlers"-option has done nothing but handicapping the AI to the limit of unplayability in the games I have tried it. The AI expands (conquers barb cities) extremely slowly or not at all so the advantage they have initially is quickly overcome by my own expansion, and the challenge is alas not even close to the "normal", sadly :( I really like the idea, but I have never gotten it to work.

I have NEVER had a game where the AI didn't conquer barb cities quickly and ferociously, are you playing an up-to-date version? if by turn 50 i haven't taken any barb cities close to me, the AI gobbles them up greedily. maybe you play with a small number of civs? i usually play a pangea map standard size with about 12-15 civs. everyone is everywhere. so really, settlers don't matter come turn 100 or so.
 
One of the amusing consequences of playing a Deity game on pangaea map is when one civ really dominates a continent; say the Hippus cut a swathe from east to west and end up crippling their economy - as DarkxLOrd point out.

Then they become satiated and sleepy. A lot of the surviving AIs, crippled by the Hippus, also become quiet as if laying low.

Then, the human can strike: we can recover better than most AIs.

Most situations that go bad for me on Deity-level, pangaea games arise from the maps. On an a large continent with Deity level armies, the human's always in for a rough beginning.
 
Yeah, I didn't realize Ice didn't give the commerce boost as well until it was too late. I thought the extra culture from the temples would help push the AI's boarders off my island.

One quirk I did find: Riverside Lumbermills(On Ice) DO give a commerce bonus, even though other riverside tiles do not. I'm trying to convert my riverside forests into lumbermills for this reason, instead of chopping to build farms.

If you are willing to make the sacrifice of one food, set one of your mana nodes to Sun mana to start off and scorch the riverside plain tiles. Tundra still receives the commerce bonus. You have a second node by your northern city that you can turn into metamagic later on.

As for the culture, start building up troops and ships and raze the enemy cities that are giving you trouble. The Hippus for example are an easy target since they are so puny. Raze one city and the rest will dogpile him due to their lowered score. For Decius, strike him fast in a few places and eliminate the problem city. Push him until you can sue for peace and then leave him be.
 
in this case, wouldn't it be better to simply conquer the hippus? i don't know how you've teched sofar or how many units are in his city, but once you eighter get to sorcery (maelstrom/fireball) or priesthood (priests of winter) you should be easily capable of taking his cities (at least 2 of them, i dunno if you want both the eastern ones), giving you a staging area from which you can attack further.
 
[to_xp]Gekko;8526247 said:
question to the deity players, isn't Aristograrian the only viable choice there? it seems to me that a cottage-based economy would be impossible to mantain with the AI constantly harassing and pillaging everything...

Nah, often enough deity starts are so violent that you can't afford to research CoL until you've gotten the basic military techs - bronze, maybe construction. If this happens your early cottages have the time to grow to villages and towns (if your cities are between them and the enemy they don't get pillaged much). Agristocracy is kind of crap in this situation and you're better off with CS + agrarianism, especially considering that you need to conquer a city or two to make an AI talk peace and those cities will often have some grown cottages too.

An isolated start begs for agristocracy though.
 
It looks like the deviation to Deception was well worth it. Nox Noctris is now pulling in 52 gold a turn, and I just finished the Bazaar of Mammon. At 100% Research, I'm getting 70-80 gold a turn now.

I got Guilds well before any of the AI. Unfortunately, I forgot that the Eyes and Ears network requires 5 Inns, and hence, 5 cities. I still only have 3. However, I could build a couple Shadows and just ravage the AI... they suck at fighting invisible units. However, I am getting rather bored, so I might actually give up even though I'm far from losing...
 
Its very easy to win on Deity. Play on a Duel map with Illians
Its very easy to win on Deity. Play Marathon Duel map with Doviello
 
for an interesting diety game, try a small/duel-pangea OCC game against a teamed AI with always war on, as the sidar. Trust me, it'll be the most powerful city you've ever had (if played correctly, excluding maybe a 300 pop. infernal city with unlimited specialists)
 
I know several people on here have beat Diety before, and I'm trying my hand at it now. I've throughly trounced the Immortal AI several times before, but I can't seem to make the jump to Diety. Can anyone who has beaten it give me advice? I'm trying to win with the Illians, it seems fitting since Auric really does plan on becomming a God.

Well FFH has so much variety that there is no simple solution. Just be flexible and play each position for its best advantage. The AI plays terribly so just outplaying it is usually good enough, however three is less margin for error at deity. A bad start can get you trapped too far behind and you can’t recover the same way you can at easyer levels. There is less margin for expensive role-playing, like building Samhain just forget it.

However the good news about Auric is that his worldspell pretty much guarantees a good start. Play it early to take out your first victim activating Drifa. Since you can take lots of casualties a warrior rush should be good enough, no need for bronze working, however I would still stay clear of the elves. Use common sense when to build hands, don’t forget the combat bonus or the loss of river trade. You want the priests and the dragon. Ascension is less clear but if you have no other way to win go for it.

Ok I have seen your map. The bad news is that alone on a island is not ideal for Auric, I want someone close I can launch and early attack backed by stasis. The good news is that we might have a lot of water on the map and the AI can’t handle water maps. Beeline the sailing and optics path. Which does not fit in particularly with Illian strategy, but you should be able to beat an island map without bothering with civ specific advantages. By the way what happens when you hit F8?

Oh and don't forget to look for Letum Figus.
 
I'm currently in a diety game on a huge archapeliago map. I'm almost 200 points above everyone in score and it doesn't look like I'll be knocked out of the top seat as we're halfway up the tech tree already.

Two keys...
No Settlers
and
Lanun on Archapeliago map.
 
Lanun on Archapeliago map.

Yeh! Well I recently tried Faeryl on a deity boreal map. After 161 turns I gave up becasue it was just too easy and restarted with a tougher map.

It was on Orbis and I wanted a reason to try out using espionage.
 
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