Winning World's Fair/International Games on Deity?

Does anyone have tips on how to win any of the WC projects on Deity? I fail at winning them close to 100% of the time whether I go Tradition or Liberty. If I'm going with 4 cities and Tradition, my production is usually mediocre unless I've landed a killer capital spot, compared to expansionist AIs with 7-10 cities (there's usually at least 2 of these). Even with a good capital and a great start I can't match Hiawatha's output at that point in the game. If I'm going Liberty, my cities are not big enough by the time the projects start to have enough production. I think. It might be that I'm actually just bad at Liberty in general. I've tried getting the other AIs to crush Hiawatha (or equivalent) early so he remains irrelevant, but usually one AI ends up getting too big from this and then he just wins.

Try to get all of the AI civs to be at war with each other just before the World's Fair/International Games kick off. If they are at war, they are somewhat less likely to devote production to those projects. No guarantees, of course, but it should help at the margin.

Browd said:

Try to get all of the AI civs to be at war with each other just before the World's Fair/International Games kick off. If they are at war, they are somewhat less likely to devote production to those projects. No guarantees, of course, but it should help at the margin.

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Yeah, I tried this one yesterday, but Washington was just such a runaway that he had no problems being at war with everyone and still winning WF. I'm glad to hear it does sometimes work. I was hoping that game was just one of those uncommon runaway scenarios.

I'll address WF, as I think it's one of the keys to winning quickly and I almost always take gold there. Since the human player gets to propose in the 1st WC about 70% of the time (this is just a guess based on my experience) I almost always propose WF 1st go-round. I almost never propose IG as; 1. I rarely have enough CS allies at that point in the game because I don't prioritize CS, 2. It's late enough that another civ will be up to 15-20 cities by then, and 3. It usually comes at a time when I'd have to break away from focus on something else.

That said, here are my tips for WF, with the assumption that it is proposed in the first WC and goes off around t160-180.

1. Make sure you have Workshops up in all cities AND have IronWorks. This means no late expos unless you have a lot of gold to buy Workshop. I usually time it to complete IronWorks right at the turn WF starts (since I'm usually building PT right around this time).
2. Turn all TR's internal within 30 turns of WF. I sometimes will have a Caravan sleep for 10 turns while waiting for a Workshop to complete so I can send hammers.
3. Build Artist's Guild immediately after WF is proposed. This gives you time to get 1 GA spawned and you want to pop him for the WF. The hammer difference usually takes me from somewhere around 130 to 160+.
4. Get your workers positioned to start chopping forest 2 turns before WF starts. With 4 city/4 worker start, you can average around 120-140 extra hammers towards WF.
5. As mentioned earlier, make sure AI's are at war if you can.

Dirty tricks:
1. Steal workers from a runaway civ. AI often will stop what they are doing and switch to worker production to replace the lost laborer.
2. Send a GG to steal a strong neighbor's production tiles.

There's probably more but I've gotta get back to turning the world Byzantium purple and designing the Inca map from hades.

Browd and SharkDiver's tips are all very good.

Starting a golden age is by far the most important. Since you're looking to finish at 1000+ hammers, that's worth close to 200 hammers all by itself. By comparison, even an Ironworks is only worth 60 or so.

Two more small tips:
- Get Chemistry. If you proposed WF at the first congress, the timing should work out well.
- I assume you're already locking all your production tiles, but go the extra mile. Use Workshop specialists and unemployed citizens too. Winning the WF is worth starving for a few turns.

Strong deity players win the WF consistently. If that's not happening, it's more likely to be a problem with your early development than with your WF strategy.

The final production tallies can help you diagnose:

• if you get beat by a runaway who produced 1500 hammers, you can blame the map and your ill luck.
• if you're ending at 800 while the winner has 1000, these tricks will make the difference.
• if you're ending at 500, you simply need better-developed cities.

Good stuff so far. I like to have 2 GA's, so I can pop one for WF hammer GAge boost, and one right after Gold, to milk all the extra culture. 8 turns after winning Gold, I burn 2 GWs to get another massive boost for policies. Once in a while I hit a natural GAge around the time WF starts, soooo nice.

About 20 turns before WF voting, I try to figure if I can make it all the way to Industrialization in time to buy/build Factories, or if I should divert for Chemistry. (A typical science game backfills that lower path later.) I will sometimes even burn a GS to get what I need in time.

Interesting that both of you recommend using the tech tree to help with WF. I have only done that when it was on my way. This is something I'll keep in my bag of tricks.

Thanks guys. I managed to propose it first, finish Ironworks, bribe war, and win it thanks to your tips. I did it without a GE, but pretty much anyone of consequence was either at war, or hard building wonders since WF came during the time of the game when Uffizi/Taj/etc were all being chased (I managed to hard build both Sistine and Pisa, and used GE on PT, so those at least were all gone).

Well, America is always going to be a problem if he gets big, because he loves tons of cities and building armies. So he usually wins wars, and he usually has tons of production. He is weak early though.
Something like a large Inca for example is much less scary.