First Deity Victory

swimslave

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 6, 2010
Messages
32
Marathon, Islands, Small, Theodora.

This may be cheap, but here goes.

After a few playthroughs on Deity it occurred to me how to mitigate the AI's capacity to spam out units --- play on marathon. Theoretically it should all be balanced, but since the human player is going to be a better tactician and do more with less units, it is harder for the AI to make up for its tactical incompetence with its sheer volume of forces.

Then I remembered from a previous Island game how totally unable the AI was at dealing with the range promotion.

That made Theodora and the dromon the perfect Civ to pick since she is now the only civ who has access to ranged naval units before Compass.

So, I beelined to sailing and then popped out three dromon. Quickly found my nearest neighbor, Greece, and then DOW. Spent some time picking off their units and taking pot shots at the cities and then healing until they all had the range promotion.

Then I just parked my three dromon w/ range 3 tiles away and starting bombarding the city until it was down to 0. By then I had researched Optics to get my original warrior (upgraded to a spearman due to a ruin) down to the city and attacked from the sea.

Rinse wash and repeat until Greece is destroyed. Then declared war on Atilla. Had to clear out his navy first but that wasn't too hard. Then compared to Atilla, Persia was a pushover. He had a huge capital city but still couldn't deal with the range promotion.

By the time Greece, Atilla, and Persia were destroyed, I had built three additional dromon. One for exploring and two others for naval destruction. They palled around with my range promoted dromon.

I paused for a few turns to get compass and then upgraded to Galleas. Dido and Ramesses were pushovers.

Only created 3 land units. One archer to defend my capital and then two others to take out cities.

Anyway...this strikes me as a cheap way to win. But a win is a win.

It probably won't work on any speed but marathon. Perhaps it will work on Epic.
 
If I'm remembering right, for me it was Polynesia on a duel archipelago map. I used Polynesia's ability to travel the ocean immediately to expand early on, while the AI had to wait and took until the end of the game to actually spread out across the islands. I used the distance between us and my rapid expansion to promote early culture. I stopped at 4-5 cities, all on different islands in case of war, and just started churning out culture. The AI was more or less friendly for most of the game, because we were never close until the end. Now by the end of the game, they had claimed every piece of land on the map except mine, and they attempted to go to war...but they never reached my shore. At least that's how I remember doing it...the hall of fame and save files for that game were lost several months ago.
 
Does anybody beat large pangaea maps on deity?
 
Does anybody beat large pangaea maps on deity?

It's a crap shoot game to game. What you'd "like" to see happen is a sort of balance wherein most (all?) of your opponents continuously kill each others' units alot, sort of leaving you to your own devices gaining traction with good city placement, your back to the ocean and decent defensible positions. If you become "odd man out" though, which can happen with bad diplomacy pretty easily, or if you see the runaway happening before industrial, it's pretty much always "curtains".

edit: gj beating deity, tho, swimslave. You're right in that marathon exploits the player's strategic play value over the AI's attrition, but you're gaining perspective and with a little "tightening up" can likely do the same water map on standard pace in the next few tries.
 
Well Done! My first was an equally cheesy Great Plains Mongol swarm. As you find more and more cheesy strategies that work, eventually they stop becoming cheesy and you just start becoming a decent player for that difficulty level.
I'd try something with similar with England or Ottomans, then satisfy yourself that AI sucks on the sea before trying some land domination and maybe branching into other vc's.
 
Top Bottom