Deity vs AI winning

Well, I have gone through a lot of posts on here and found a lot useful and a lot useless as far as fighting the AI and wanting to win. The most helpful hints were these...

Culture/Population Growth and Social Policies. All the little cheats and loopholes for instance, Adopting Warrior Code and killing Barbs all day long doesn't really do much against the AI. Also many of such suggestions. It seems that Warfare is not very practical vs the AI. Though I have found time and time again in order to survive you need several things. Good Terrain, the Right Civilizations and at least space to go up to 4-5 Cities to begin with. Plus if you're next door to an aggressive Civ, good luck... Most with the wrong terrain and not enough room to grow with just get unit spammed. Others may be better at warfare or development/micromanagement than I am..that or Diplomacy but I have tried several suggestions that way and only managed to end up an Age behind the AI at best usually costing me the game in the long run.

All this has been previously outlined on here but I found that the only thing I can do better than the AI is outsmart it with my development choices. Liberty/Tradition mixes or one or the other to get GROWTH. Then whatever religion and happiness that can be acquired as cheap and as fast as possible and staying in the Green with Happiness constantly. Food Focus... Quick establishment of early cities if you have to buy a settler. Scouting like mad to get all the freebies and early cash from CSs/Ruins/but not before you steal a worker(just 1 from the AI CS) Then you really need get those cities growing... preferably you pick opponents like Brazil/India/even get lucky and your Primary Base is on a Peninsula(as you do not have to buy a large military early and risk losing your growth) So with luck and good starter position you can grow your cities to the largest population and the best tech in the game and reach the Atomic Age before anyone and buy a ton of units at that point and spam the AI. I find that waking up next to Napoleon no matter what, if I do not have a massive junk military he will constantly DOW me if I am a certain distance from him and he does the Math that I am militarily viable to be taken out. Or any Civ pretty much... They just do a calculation and distance-military size-etc... and you're at war at a certain point unless you're lucky enough to find them at war constantly with someone else. It's just built into the code.

BTW: You want to get the basic value for your dollars in Tech(lux resource development, develop the heck out your Real Estate, keep your cities away from the Sea as they don't develop as fast there, you want make the CSs happy if you have to buy them off as their bonus food/happiness is a huge boost when you're really not doing well a high population or early development. A lot of this can be done for next to nothing just by discovering World Wonders, building roads, or trading off one of your resources/luxs for something they want or you own City wants. Always get Love the King Day if you can trade up... so you have to be very active, to get the highest possible population you can dream of. Making lots of friends and no enemies, avoiding war, be cautious of Defensive Treaties..

I have found I never get to dip into Rationalism fully by the time I get Industrial Era ..(means you're teching right)


In the end you will have the highest Tech/everyone will fear your Nukes/plus if you really boom with National College-Specialists-Oxford... you will have the ability to now influence the world. I found the AI doesn't do too bad when you lessen the amount of AI on a Normal Sized Map.(it can get pretty high Pop/Science with the City Spamming it does) It can almost try to keep pace with you but as far as a war game I cannot figure any other way out to win on Deity. Add your 2 cents, critique me...

You sort of need to learn a few things by experience;

1) Know what you can do with the Terrain given to you.
2) Know how to settle cities
3)Know how much damage a unit can take to not get one-shotted
4) Know when to raze and when to puppet
5)Know correct compositions for the terrain you are facing

Aside from that if you want to war versus AI you need to hit a timing window. There are various warmonger guides you can follow one of the easiest and most generic is the Liberty/Pyramids/Commerce. There are others tailored to specific civs im sure you can find them. GLHF
m.

Been studying some of the BNW posts on war and such, seems no matter knowing all that a runaway Civ and the nature of the AI makes winning a tough proposition for Domination Victory. Going Tall is easy, as is a Science victory if you're in the right shoes and your not peeing off the AI(kissing its butt) but as far as a wide and powerful Warfare Civ...jeeeeeez, anyone would have issues when you're spammed with 15 to 5 units no matter how you micromanage due to the fact you have 2 Civs with larger armies assaulting your Key Science/Production cities before you can jump through the Techs.(I've got Brazil placing 3 cities behind my lines and 4 Times my Population cause I cannot optimize fast enough, just spams and by the time I have my Happiness/Science buildings up I got to fight them) Killed 20 off their superior units in the and they won't offer peace and 20 more are built like pronto : ) this game is so fun )

Umm are you new to Civ V? Playing Vanilla, G&K, BNW? I can't tell from the opening post, if you are not new then disregard this paragraph. Domination Victory is perhaps best learned on lower difficulty level than Diety and on smaller maps. Start off on normal difficulty (Prince) and work your way up. Similarly if you fire up a Duel 1v1 map you'll be able to practice your opening moves without commiting to a whole game (which might end in disaster if you don't know what you're doing).

Domination Victory is not as straightforward as it may look - you have to find the perfect balance between warmongering and developing your empire. Gone are the days where you could just spam units from your capital and add infinite amount of puppets. With the 5% penalty per city (I assume BNW expansion) you have to gradually annex new cities and develop them (namely by adding and buildings). Fail to do that and you'll inevitebly end up behind and run the risk of another AI pulling off a surprise culture or science win.

As for the actual warmongering, not much can be said that won't be come out as obvious I guess. As you already heard, the AI is pretty bad both in combat and developing their cities, even on Diety. It is only the obnoxious bonuses that they get that make them somewhat challenging to beat on. However, most of those advantage can be abused by a skillful player (yeeeah I said that, single player takes skill! flame on MP players ).

Some of the best things you can (and probably should) do on Diety:
* steal workers from major civs (they always start with them)
* sell all your crap (iron, horses, gold per turn) for raw gold
* prioritize early caravans over libraries when they're yielding more
* pillage tiles in enemy territory and repairing them in 1 turn
* ... the possibilities are endless!

Some would say some of the above are exploits and shouldn't be used. I used to say that too... until I rolled a map with Shaka next door. You would not believe things I, a seemingly normal person, did in that game. I don't want to go into details, but it involved selling a family member for lump sum of gold to afford Walls.

Might even argue that this game becomes easier on higher difficulty levels, as (almost) anything the AI has in spades you can take. The only "problem" is their units standing in the way. And how to deal with them I shall leave for you to discover

Paszczak,

my last posting was a little disjointed was tired. Thank you, that was superb information on how to exploit the weaknesses of the AI, I have been noting a lot of the stuff I have been reading here. I have not tried two of those items you mentioned and I have noticed how it is tough being torn from being a 100% Immortal Winner to being a 100% losing Deity Winner(solely Domination Victory) Just so use to developing Tall beautiful cities with mega-Science and ignoring Diplomacy and other things. In this case I have been getting City Spammed by the AI with Normal Maps and or Run Away Civs and not watching my back. It's so quick that you see 25 to 35 Units plundering you when you are trying to jump an age or two quickly and ignoring some of your military to do that. That or a nation with 15 cities over just an age and since the bonuses are so beautiful you are toast with your petty 4-7. No amount of skill seems to win out if the AI is stubborn, the other night I was in a War 75% of the game with Brazil, a nation that often offers me peace after 5 turns for some odd reason. Fun : ) Insane : ) I cannot wait for Multiplayer, with the exploits, (the AI is cheating) only way to make things completely fair!