Domination training trail

Hello, fellow Civfanatics...

I'm honored to be part of such a thriving and helpful community. Any and all constructive criticism and advice is greatly appreciated.

A brief history:



So, I find myself delving into the WarPath at Deity level with very little actual experience at warfare. I also feel that to move forward in the way I am interested in that I require a Liberty/Pyramids start because warfare at this level without pillage/heal seems impractical. So far my 30 or so(read as probably 100) attempts have gone uhm.. poorly is a word.

I play standard/standard/8-16 random/Pangaea or Continents. My main Civs for this have been The Shoshone, Poland and Babylon. I have tried a few others but things went extremely bad, so...

I mostly have no problem getting 2 cities going and nabbing The Pyramids but from there one thing or another will either end it by t115 or I will get stuck in a corner by a civ I cannot defeat. I could tell a bunch amusing stories but I don't think they'll be very constructive. At just 2 cities I find that I can't catch up in techs.

Now, I have learned a great deal from guides, videos and I've gotten some very excellent advice from posting in other threads(and I have made some small progress), but I feel its time for me to step back and take possibly a different approach here.

What I'm looking for now is some recommendations regrading settings, maps and hand-picked AI to make learning the ins and outs of warfare go a bit easier. Also, is there somewhere that I can review the quirky caveats of unit specific movement in combat situations. It can be incredibly frustrating at times when units are unable to move through the terrain in the way you expect them to and you are left having no idea why things just happened the way they did.

While I'm open to suggestions, it seems to me that moving back to immortal or lower will just hamstring the Lib start and cause a different set of issues which will take my focus away from what I really need to learn. But, if a kind of Training Trail could be pieced together here to aid in learning to fight better, I'd be more than willing to drop down a level or 3 to get the experience I need to move up.

Finally, anything that this experienced community can suggest that may help me to improve would provoke my eternal gratitude and possibly even help others who would read this thread.

The key to victory on deity is catching up. Once that's achieved then you can head towards your victory condition. If you catch up (and then move ahead in tech), you'll win the game. Popping great scientists to be the first to nukes & XCOM guarantees you are military win condition.

If you take an early->mid game war monger civ (like Ghengis/huns/arabia), then you may be able to take out a neighbouring civ early, but you need to ensure your 'catch up' ins't delayed.

Personally, I tend to avoid trying for wonders in the early game simply due to the likely chance you'll be beat to them by an AI. I just think there is too much opportunity/cost as the AI has such a huge early tech lead. This is further compounded by all the lost hammers.

Sure, the Pyramids are nice, but it costs more hammers than 2 workers cost to hard build & if you are beaten to it, it's a huge blow early game.

I recommend that you download the SDK and watch a good deal of turns using the firetuner. I've done that , and decided that I simply don't have the stomach to play in this difficulty setting...
What I've seen in this type of autoplay is that:
1) Since the AI have a lot more support for units, they build *huge* armies.
2) I have serious doubts about the viability of doing a GreatLib slingshot on deity, unless maybe you use quick game speeds, where mobility is less intense than research and production.
3) Outmaneuvering the crappy AI seems to be key. The computer seems to care nothing about their own defenses. If you manage to take out their armies a swift counterattack may ruin completely their day.

General Angst said:

What I'm looking for now is some recommendations regrading settings, maps and hand-picked AI to make learning the ins and outs of warfare go a bit easier. Also, is there somewhere that I can review the quirky caveats of unit specific movement in combat situations. It can be incredibly frustrating at times when units are unable to move through the terrain in the way you expect them to and you are left having no idea why things just happened the way they did.

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Civ 5 have very simple rules regarding combat and movement: maybe you have problems actually reading the map? I almost never play the game outside of strategic view just because of that: ok, it's cute to see the city landscape, and the armies in combat, but other than that, it is only a hindrance...

tinculin said:

The key to victory on deity is catching up.

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Thanks, I will try this.

tinculin said:

Sure, the Pyramids are nice, but it costs more hammers than 2 workers cost to hard build & if you are beaten to it, it's a huge blow early game.

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The thing is not so much the 2 workers as having the ability to repair an enemy improvement then re-plunder it and attack each and every turn. It keeps your troops healed so you can swap them out less often and gives huge amounts of gold when you have 4 units doing it per turn.

albucc said:

I recommend that you download the SDK and watch a good deal of turns using the firetuner. I've done that , and decided that I simply don't have the stomach to play in this difficulty setting...

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1) Yes, they do build huge armies, but the issues I have are often not that so much as getting used to how things actually work and WHY.
2) The great Library aside I nail the Pyramids most games and I can get Petra as well, often if the situation calls for it.
3) Outmaneuvering the crappy AI seems does seem to be the issue. I guess its going to come down to practice and that's why I asked for the help I did in this thread.

albucc said:

Civ 5 have very simple rules regarding combat and movement: maybe you have problems actually reading the map? I almost never play the game outside of strategic view just because of that: ok, it's cute to see the city landscape, and the armies in combat, but other than that, it is only a hindrance...

Click to expand...

OK well, just as an example. I built a road right into the third ring of one of Napoleon's cities. It ends on a hill. Next to it, also in the third ring of said city is a hill on which I placed a crossbow who was absolutely devastating most of the French army. So, I see two Knights rushing over from Paris. I take one more turn raining death on his stupid pikeman then take 1 step off the hill onto the road expecting to be able to zip down the road back to my capital. Low and behold, I am only able to take 1 more tile down the road. WHY? I was never in anyone's ZoC. The Pikes were two tiles away and I had killed them the previous turn.

On any other occasion I would be able to step onto the road and then move several more tiles. I use that way of positioning my reinforcements within my own borders all the time. Never had a problem with it before.

The point is... if I had known this caveat existed I would have moved him a turn sooner and not lost a highly promoted unit. I know of lots of other examples and its these little quirks that are holding me back.

Why dont you take a look at this thread?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=528303

You have a very good chance to win domination in this map.

budweiser said:

Why dont you take a look at this thread?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=528303

You have a very good chance to win domination in this map.

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Thanks bud... I'll give it a shot once I finish the Venice deity OCC game I started to take a break from getting my ass kicked.

General Angst said:

OK well, just as an example. I built a road right into the third ring of one of Napoleon's cities. It ends on a hill. Next to it, also in the third ring of said city is a hill on which I placed a crossbow who was absolutely devastating most of the French army. So, I see two Knights rushing over from Paris. I take one more turn raining death on his stupid pikeman then take 1 step off the hill onto the road expecting to be able to zip down the road back to my capital. Low and behold, I am only able to take 1 more tile down the road. WHY? I was never in anyone's ZoC. The Pikes were two tiles away and I had killed them the previous turn.

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Well, one of the rules of movement on civ5 is that you simply can't use roads in enemy territory. That seems to be the WHY. And yes, I know this rule seems silly...

Another thing: always watch-out if the enemy has built the great wall: it makes all movements cost double inside their territory. Napoleon has an itch for building it, by the way... If you take the city that has built the great wall then this bonus stop. Yes, yet another silly concept, by the way...

Yet another thing: to activate autosave and go back a few turns when something goes wrong is great for learning: this avoids having to try everything again from the start.

budweiser said:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=528303.

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Thank ya much for this map, bud. This is more or less what I was looking for when I made the thread. While I didn't win my first time, I learned much and had a ton of fun. Warred once I got to Arties, kicked the snot outta Pacal, and was fighting over his Cap with Pocatutti(er w/e) when Monty backstabbed me. No way I could hold them both off. I'll be sure to keep everyone warring each other next try.

albucc said:

Well, one of the rules of movement on civ5 is that you simply can't use roads in enemy territory. That seems to be the WHY. And yes, I know this rule seems silly...

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Silly or even stupid, but now that I know it explains many of the issues I've run into that make my head spin.

albucc said:

Another thing: always watch-out if the enemy has built the great wall: it makes all movements cost double inside their territory. Napoleon has an itch for building it, by the way... If you take the city that has built the great wall then this bonus stop. Yes, yet another silly concept, by the way...

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This is one that I was aware of because it is explained in the Civepedia, and yes.. it makes about as much sense as the roads in enemy territory rule.

albucc said:

Yet another thing: to activate autosave and go back a few turns when something goes wrong is great for learning: this avoids having to try everything again from the start.

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I do have the auto saves on, but I rarely use it because a win this way just feels hollow to me. I'm one of those weirdos that never use cheats and cannot fathom why anyone else would. I do use it if I forget to do something that I had intended to do and it has game-losing consequences for me.

Is there somewhere that all these little rules are compiled?

General Angst said:

Is there somewhere that all these little rules are compiled?

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Well... the most reliable source for the movement rules in in the game core , since that is the code itself... the Class CivUnit.cpp have the method "changeMoves", and the code I've seen so far this method is only called by two classes, CvUnit.cpp and CvUnitCombat.cpp...

And the class CvUnitMovement.cpp have the method
::GetCostsForMove(const CvUnit* pUnit, const CvPlot* pFromPlot, const CvPlot* pToPlot, int iBaseMoves, int& iRegularCost, int& iRouteCost, int& iRouteFlatCost)

I've found something interesting, that there seems to be a bonus for movement alongside rivers... Have anyone seen such bonus on a unit?

Someone with time and effort could interpret all the itsy-bitsy rules there and form a compilation...