First game on King difficulty *thoughts*

Hi everyone,

Just finished my first king game by achieving a Diplomatic Victory in 2029 (!!!)

Played as Pocatello, marathon, continents, 12 civs and 20 CS. The beginning was very hard, I actually didn't manage to beat the AI's science advantage until the late industrial era. England and China were in my continent and I only managed to meet the other players when Portugal had already proved the world was round, so I lost the 1st World Congress leadership.

Elizabeth was spawning too close to my 3 cities by the beginning of renaissance. I didn't want to fight later, when she would have longbowmen and ships of the line, so I declared war, wiped her off the map and got a warmongering reputation with China, who didn't waste the chance to denounce me until the end of the game. This made trading very hard and my happiness suffered until I could adopt and Ideology (luckily for me, I was the first, got order because of the happiness tenants and managed to make it the dominant ideology later).

Even with my 3 own cities, London annexed and a few puppets, I still couldn't surpass the science gap, alternating between 3rd and 2nd in science and points until I decided to go all the way through patronage, getting the science bonuses from allies CS on the way. It was hard to compete with the multimillionaires for CS favors (Arabia, Morocco and Portugal). At a certain point, the first 2 destroyed Portugal, which was the only "friendly" civilization. But then I got the world congress and being allied to most of the CS helped me to make my religion and ideology dominant. Then I wiped off China, just because I wanted to.

In general, the game was much more challenging than on Prince and I think I was lucky to win on my first attempt. The AI plays better on this level and doesn't do stupid things like DOWing CS. Shaka did, once on one of my allies, but made peace when I offered him a single luxury. They also work better towards a cultural victory. By the point the game ended, 3 of the 5 remaining civilizations needed influence on 2 others to win. ALL the antiquity sites were excavated and even though I rush to produce archeologists as soon as I can, I still had some artifact slots to fill in my museums.

Anyway, it was a fun game... wondering which leader should I chose next. Casimir was fun on Prince, I enjoy it a lot. Thanks for reading and any suggestions will be appreciated.

Hi there, First of all, congratulations on your "first win on first attempt" on King Difficulty

I'm a King player too about one month ago, and I've moved into emperor recently. my suggestions are to Focus on your Victory condition, for example on King, Science victory should be easy enough to obtain :

-research early tech as you see fit (based on nearby resources, open AH and BW if you can, trade the resources for gold), about turn 50-60, research philosophy, build national college as fast as you can, Go Civil service, go theology, then Education. Build Universities and assign specialist as early as possible. Build Academy Science with your 2-4 first GS, save the rest for bulbing, after education, go acoustics, blitz your way through, take the upper industrial era path, so that you can advance to modern as soon as possible (Radio), choose ideology, and propose world ideology during congress. (No one would be angry, they haven't even know what is ideology ).

-open Rationalism on first chance, take specialist +2 science if you have the pop to spare (Artists, Writers, Musicians, Don't bother with Engineers or Merchants), otherwise just push through the right side (+17% science from Uni). Build Pisa Tower if you can, and take the Great Engineer, use it to rush Porcelain Tower. (+25% GPP all city + 1 GE + 1 GS + 50% bonus from RA + 2 wonder).

-You should also adapt with your current circumstances, if your neighbor is Shaka, well, expect wars to happen

-Watch the Global Politics tab, if anyone opens honor, he/she is probably going to DoW everyone near him. if anyone took liberty, expect an Expansionist here. If they go Piety, they will have religion.

-try watching some Let's Play games, especially the deity ones, I usually choose a talkative narrator (MadDjinn & LC so far).

-I'd say the most important thing to be a better player is to learn adapting strategy on the fly, adapt your planned strategy with the current in game condition, backup plan would be great (e.g Having CS Allies can prepare a Diplomatic Victory, high culture output for Culture victory, etc etc)

Hope this is useful, Good luck and cheers

Regards,

Reid

Congrats on your first King win! Keeping up in tech is a huge deal, regardless of VC. Generally, I like to get all my nearby resource techs (Mining, Animal Husbandry, Calendar, etc) and then go Philosophy for the NC. If you've already expanded, try to get Libraries up as soon as possible (rushing them in some low production cities). Depending on how early you get the NC, you can afford to pick up some other techs before heading towards Education; if you waited awhile, go towards Education pretty early.

If you find you are behind in tech still, figure out who's ahead and throw some spies in their cities. The advanced AI are sometimes smart enough to have a spy in their capital, so be mindful of steal times!

Pointers for higher difficulties: don't completely wipe out a civ. On lower difficulties they may hate you and whatnot, but they'll actually have the military to back it up on Emperor+ so be careful. Also, don't focus too much on Wonders (unless you're the only one who opened a policy tree); on higher difficulties its very difficult to get the early wonders.

Good luck!

Oh, and my recommendation for next civ? Brazil. If you can get past the early production problems, they turn into superpowers when surrounded by jungle. I cleared all the jungle/hills and built mines, but the rest I pretty much left jungle. Extra food, science, culture, and gold... Plus they're good defensively since they're around jungles.

Great tips here, thank you, guys!

I am still trying to get over not having ALL the wonders in the game, the AI beat me three times during the last game. At a certain point I decided to build wonders only if I could rush them with GEs. Fortunately I had a lot due to my reformation belief (buy any kind of GP with faith) and from bonuses from ideology tenants and gardens. I actually bought only GS and GEs with faith... bulbed until I could get close to the AI in research, then the GSs got too expensive, so I started buying GEs to rush the wonders I wanted. Building an army wasn't that hard, my cities were all coastal, so I left my land units supply to the allied militaristic CS and invested my production on a huge fleet. I was really aiming for a SV, all my victories in BNW were cultural so far, but I was leading in culture until the end of the game. Unfortunately, the diplo victory came before the science, I got allied with ALL the CS because of the science bonuses and ended up not having a choice, but I already had 2 parts done when that happened

The late war on China was necessary to get more population (=more science) and because Morocco was attacking her city on his continent. If I let him set foot on my land, things might have gotten ugly, since he was hostile the entire game and had nukes.

I like the idea of watching "let's play" games, need to inform myself better about how this works and Brazil sounds like a good choice for my next one, I played twice as Brazil on Prince already, one single and one multi player. Managed to win at least the single player (culturally, of course). The production sucks in the beginning but the UI, with the right pantheon is amazing!

Here's another tip : if the circumstances allow it, don't bulb until you had Science buildings on all cities and filled them with specialists (Library, National College, Universities +2 spec, Public School +1 spec, Research Lab +1 spec, Observatory&Academy Science--if possible), you should be able to get above 8k beakers when bulbing with GS.

Remember, GE and GS has the same GPP counter, so for example it needs 100 points to get a GE/GS, then you get a GS now, your next GE AND GS will need 200 points. Usually deity players only have 1-2 GE each game, because they really want to focus on GS's .

Another possible mistake : "Wonder Whoring", I'd say you only need Oracle, Pisa, and Porcelain Tower to win the game, other wonders are just a nice addition. Learn to survive without wonders, it'll help a lot

Thank you Reidzeibel, I would love to learn more about how to manually manage my specialists. I leave my cities on default focus 99% of the times, just switch to production to win World Fairs & International Games, never got more than 2k something beakers when bulbing. I know allocating specialists is mandatory in higher difficulties, is there any good tutorial on that? I mean, so far my non-allocating specialists game has worked against the AI, but may not be enough if I try it agains HPs or in higher levels... TY!

PS: I am a wonder whore, I just love to see my points going up when I finish one, but it's a bad habit I need to get rid of, since I always disable time victory I usually go for the ToA + HG in my capital and in a few lucky cases, the GL. If I decide to explore the Aesthetics SP tree (which I didn't this time), I try to put at least one wonder on each city. And I HATE having deserts nearby, because this means I have to beeline for the Petra and delay other very important techs on the way.