Tilting at the Deity windmill

It's all (well, mostly) Lanzelot's fault. Now I'm bored The game is too easy at Emperor and Justanick said Deity is only 15% harder than DG. 15 per cent. I may well trash my current effort without bothering to finish it, a new thing for me. So this promises to be a very long and depressing thread in which I try to deify myself. Imagine! To be an actual God!

Decisions

1 map - probably standard, continental (max land area) 4 billion, temperate, normal with no barbs

2 start position - I will reload until I start on a river with either a cow, or wheat or a lux. No flood plain as it does my head in when they start dying of disease.

3 civ - must be agricultural plus something. Candidates:

(i) Maya - I dislike their UU, which derives a lot of its value from enslaving barbs, of which there will be none.

(ii) Iroquois - awesome UU and perfect starting tech combo. Not sure I know what the commercial trait is for though.

(iii) the Celts - the swordsman is great and I am a bit of a temple builder.

Probably the Iroquois, because of the starting techs and the chance of getting Philosophy first (forget the slingshot).

3 opposing civs - I consider it perfectly fair to hand pick crap opponents. They should not include any expansionists because of the early tech trading but seafaring is fine. They should not be able to make strong defensive units early in the game. So no Carthage, Zulu or Greeks. I fancy England, the Byzantines, the Hittites, Rome (the AI misuses the legionary) India, Spain and perhaps France. The crappier the better.

I will probably aim for a space race win but any win, even achieved by bribery and corruption at FIFA the UN will do.

Does anyone know how to take a screenshot on an iMac running windows 7 in boot camp?

walletta said:

Justanick said Deity is only 15% harder than DG. 15 per cent.

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16.7%. It is 7/6 if one only looks at the cost factor. But also the Nopt modifier is reduced from 0.7 to 0.6, so "total effective difficulty" is quite a bit more than DG.

walletta said:

Not sure I know what the commercial trait is for though.

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You get +2 base commerce in cities and +3 base commerce in metropolises. That is about 10% more base commerce in communism. Furthermore rank corruption is slightly decreased, something that can be noticed whenever not in communism. In the long run commercial is a very strong trait.

Imo the Iroquois have the 2 strongest traits and the combinations is especially powerful as you reach city size fast. The UU is probably the most powerful in the game, thus they are perfect to win Sid. At lower settings you risk reducing the utility by fast research.

If you want to have an easy time on Deity the Iroquois are the way to go. If you wish to fail choose something else.

Well, I did indeed choose the Iroquois and settled on plains, by a river, with three sources of wine. In choosing the Hittites I forgot (or never knew) they are expansionist but, no matter, I won the race to Philo (it's 1450BC) and chose Code of Laws as planned. I have traded Philo for quite a bit and am about to start a second round of trading of CoL, which should temporarily bring me up alongside the other civs.

I would prefer to keep it and thus make it to Republic on my own but that will only result in threats of war if I don't hand it over for nothing so I must grin and bear it. At least the AI will pay royally for it.

My second city is the settler pump. I chopped some trees for a granary there. The capital has a barracks and will grow and spew out mounted warriors

The bad news is (are):

1 I am hemmed in by 4 neighbouring civs (England, Hitties, Spain and Byzantium -which means Rome, France and India have the other continent all to themselves) and only have room for my inner core plus a spur at the end of which I spy some horses and for which my next settler will make a bee-line, with the gaps to be filled in by later settlers. The horses are about three to four towns' distance away, spacing at CxxC

2 something else I forget but instead of that, I find there is a print screen function on an apple keyboard operating in Windows mode. It's function, shift, F11. But it doesn't work while Civ is running! I have thought of a possible work around which I will try tonight.

My plan is to diplomatically isolate England to my north (she should be a pushover) and use my GA to accelerate to Republic, extorting what I can from the English, becoming mighty and then choosing one of the others for similar treatment.

Oh, and I have spices in my second city, so the people are will be happy for a while.

Following a link yesterday I found myself reading an account of a very high level MAya game (by spoonwood perhaps?). I was staggered at the vast numbers of workers he had. I infer that correct play involves having masses of these guys and will lose no opportunity to add to their number.

walletta said:

Well, I did indeed choose the Iroquois and settled on plains, by a river, with three sources of wine. In choosing the Hittites I forgot (or never knew) they are expansionist but, no matter, I won the race to Philo (it's 1450BC) and chose Code of Laws as planned. I have traded Philo for quite a bit and am about to start a second round of trading of CoL, which should temporarily bring me up alongside the other civs.

I would prefer to keep it and thus make it to Republic on my own but that will only result in threats of war if I don't hand it over for nothing so I must grin and bear it. At least the AI will pay royally for it

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I would be interested in hearing a regular Deity player's opinion on this point.

Given that Republic is the most(?) expensive AA tech, and that the AICivs seem to tech-trade quite happily at Emp (never mind DG/Deity), would it not be more sensible to help the AICivs to research Republic as quickly as possible (i.e. ensure they learn Philo and CoL ASAP -- for a good price of course!), and then pass it around amongst themselves?

In the meantime, do minimal/ zero research on Republic yourself, allowing you then to either

• Accumulate gold with max (affordable) TAX% and Markets, to buy it cheaper once it gets sold around to most/all of your rivals

or

• Research Lit at the max (affordable) SCI%, while (pre)building the GLib, so as to get Republic once 2 other AICivs have it

@Walletta: Do you know this one already...?

Researching lit with a view to building the Great Lib may well be a better route to take, you are right. I, too, would be interested in the thoughts of a Deity regular. I am not yet committed to the Republic research path, the game being paused just after I got philo and CoL free.

One thing I have found is that the AI often skips researching republic altogether, preferring Monarchy, which can mean that you still have to research Republic yourself the hard way. The AI will then pay royally to have it but by that time you will have sent a damagingly long period under despotism.

The 'lending library' idea is unbelievably sneaky and very funny. I would be worried about a powerful civ taking away the city in question and thus making it hard to get back.

walletta said:

Researching lit with a view to building the Great Lib may well be a better route to take, you are right.

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Not necessarily! But in my Koreans-Emp game, this worked for me after I realised I'd missed the slingshot: (pre)building MoM --> ToA --> GLib got me Republic. So I was wondering if it would work at Deity too

One thing I have found is that the AI often skips researching republic altogether, preferring Monarchy, which can mean that you still have to research Republic yourself the hard way.

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The AI doesn't look ahead along the tech-tree -- it asks 'What is the best/most valuable next tech to research, given what I know right now?' So if the AICivs have Philo and CoL, but not yet Poly, they can 'see' Republic as a prospect, but Monarchy will still be 'invisible'.

The 'lending library' idea is unbelievably sneaky and very funny. I would be worried about a powerful civ taking away the city in question and thus making it hard to get back.

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That's why you'd make sure the GLib-town is buried within your core -- that's what I meant by 'landlocked', sorry. Not only will that mean you've got a good chance of (pre)building it with decent SPT (under Despot, remember), any more powerful enemy would have to carve through all your defences to reach it, or they'd need an RoP (so don't give them one!).

And so long as the city has no StratRes in its BFC, and you don't make an RoP with the lendee either, your caretaker won't be able to build any Resource-requiring units in it. After they got Edu from it, it would have become useless to them -- so they won't get Nationalism. So if they're last in the tech-race, the best defender they'll be able to muster would be a Spear -- or at worst a Pike/Musket, if the GLib-town itself has Iron/Saltpeter. Don't think you'll have any trouble taking out a couple of Muskets with your Knights/Cavs...!

I just realised I also didn't stress that point specifically. Maybe it goes without saying, but in order for this trick to work, you must NOT research or buy Edu yourself between lending the GLib and retaking it; otherwise, you won't get any more techs after liberating the GLib-town...

Hmm, the difficulty as I see it is in having a city I 'don't mind losing for a while'. I fancy it will be some time before such a city emerges within the nascent empire. Even shooting for the Great Lib seems a bit of a risk. What's that? 400 shields? Yikes. I can make a lot of MWs for that kind of money. OTOH, I have scientific leaders switched on and I can be pretty sure of getting to literature first (lit. not being by any means a worthless tech either, even if it's a dead end) so I may go that way hoping to get a GSL and then the library but falling back on contemporaneous military preparations and empire building the while.

If all fails then I shall shadow the IAs and pick up cheap techs in the MA and see how far I get in my first outing.

Oh, now I remember: the second piece of bad news was that I am nowhere near the sea which means I can't exploit alphabet to build a curragh and go find the other three civs.

Hah! Missed the Gt. library by just 5 turns in 530BC and so tossed my first effort having nothing else to pour the wasted shields into. My tightly packed Civ of 12-13 cities was doing well on the diplomatic front having averted destruction by the Hittites by selling them literature for Ivory and gold and agreeing a ROP at the same time. They used it to cross over and attack Spain which defended itself largely on my land! . A tad bothersome but no more (look! Would you two go and fight somewhere else, I'm trying to dig a mine here for chrissake!)

Next time, I have the answer - pile workers into the city building the GL to beef it up to max while others develop all shield-producing tiles ASAP. As the science slider is on 0% the happy slider can go up and up.

Hopefully, in the next game, my continent will not be so overcrowded.

2nd try sans Hittites. Can't recall who I replaced them with. Oh yes, the Babylonians, my neighbours to the north. This time I got a vast expanse of turf to grow into. Went for writing, philo with no trading on the way. Missed philo by a distance, diverted to literature. Again no trading. Completed the great lib and went into anarchy in 230 BC having just rejected a Byzantine demand for somethinb or other. 500 gold in the treasury. I need some embassies, libraries, marketplaces and MWs with which I can erase the isolated foreign towns planted within my very large zone of the map. Game paused for the weekend which gives me time to think of a Middle Ages strategy.

I have ivory, gems and wine, horses (that's what they demanded - no frikkin' way man!!). Iron is a long ways away and a road must be cut through some mountains but the gee gees can manage meanwhile.

So, not too bad this one.

As the Iroquois you have little use for republic. Choose monarchy instead. The war weariness and the 2 gtp per mounted warrior donnot mix well with the Iroquois. You need to spam out MW and monarchy suits this goal. The GL can suit this game, but building it yourself is quite an investment. For 400 shields you can build 13.33 MW. That is quite a force, even and especially if you skip barracks. The Iroquois have a unique ability for nearly unstoppable offensives between horseback riding and nationlism or even replaceable parts. Use it.

justanick said:

As the Iroquois you have little use for republic. Choose monarchy instead. The war weariness and the 2 gtp per mounted warrior donnot mix well with the Iroquois. You need to spam out MW and monarchy suits this goal. The GL can suit this game, but building it yourself is quite an investment. For 400 shields you can build 13.33 MW. That is quite a force, even and especially if you skip barracks. The Iroquois have a unique ability for nearly unstoppable offensives between horseback riding and nationlism or even replaceable parts. Use it.

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Wait til Lanzelot hears this. There'll be trouble.

That game was aborted when I saw a horde of ancient cavalry heading towards my undefended, overstretched empire. Game 3 was another claustrophobic affair, with France and England treading on my toes. I formed a brilliant plan to take France's horses away (I had none) and hoover up the towns she had planted within what was, properly speaking, my sphere. Thus an ancient era GA arose. England should have stayed out of it but, oddly, right after agreeing an exchange of luxuries, for which I agreed to pay 2 gpt on top, she joined in on France's side. I could probably have fended them both off but, playing in a hurry, I overlooked a spearman plonking himself on my horses and destroying the road and couldn't be bothered to repair my error. Game trashed. I am 0 for 3 as the yanks say. Hey ho. Off to play chess in Amsterdam and then back to the coalface next week.

justanick said:

:
If you want to have an easy time on Deity the Iroquois are the way to go. If you wish to fail choose something else.

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Now that's too much of exaggeration. There's no doubt that Iroquois are an easy civ to play at diety and they can be quite effective but that doesn't in the least mean that all other choices will cause you to fail. I played my first diety game with the Persians on a standard pangea and I won with the UN. The Persian UU the immortals are just unbeatable. You can just build up a stack of 15 - 20 of these and be walking over the AI, laughing all the way. Also with the immortals is rare for the AI to actually threaten you and in my game they even gave me 2 techs (at 2 different times) just cause I threatened their puny empire. Also the industrious advantage makes sure you have enough Shields to churn out those immortals and a road network to get them where they need to be. The scientific trait helps get the human player a head start when entering a new age.
So what I say is that Iroquois are an easy civ to play but certainly not the only easy civ.

Atishay Jain said:

....but that doesn't in the least mean that all other choices will cause you to fail.

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I did not write that. But all other choices make it easier to fail without playing bad on purpose. walletta has repeadly expressed some liking to challenging situations and learning from the errors that become more obvious when confronted with obstacles.

As for traits i would always choose AGRI over IND and COM over SCI, at least on the higher levels. As for the UU it depends on availabilty of resources. If both iron and horse are available and are not depleted i would also choose the MW over the Immortal. Still having an medieval infantry for 30 shields from the beginning on is a quite comfortable edge.

walletta said:

Wait til Lanzelot hears this. There'll be trouble.

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Yes, indeed...
The Republic goes well with the commercial trait, doesn't it.

It does not. Commercial does devalue both the corruption bonus of republic and the commerce bonus aswell.

Republic goes well with industrial as this means there are less workers needed.
Monarchy goes well with Sid and the Iroquous. Monarchy is good for war in a timely manner. If you can afford to delay war, than Republic becomes the better choice.

130 BC just finished the Gt. Lib and now enjoy a piece of the tech lead. I have three luxuries, two supplies of horse, one of iron. About to find out whether there is any saltpetre where I live. No war to speak of. The mounted warrior may be obsolete before I get to use it. About to go into anarchy and emerge as a republic.

Another thing that can help is playing arch instead of continents. Helps slow down the tech pace a bit by delaying contacts. Choosing Byzantines can help keep your main island relatively safe(er) until railroads. Those dromons, man.

Lord Plebian said:

Another thing that can help is playing arch instead of continents. Helps slow down the tech pace a bit by delaying contacts. Choosing Byzantines can help keep your main island relatively safe(er) until railroads. Those dromons, man.

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It's not my style TBH. I read elsewhere that dromons are considered an excellent UU. Why is that?