Deity help/issues

Hello,

I am trying to win in deity because I can win in all other difficulty levels but I couldn't figure it out in my 2 long games.

First I tried Venice to have the double trade route advantage and I was thinking that I could be a cultural empire. It did not work out because I had to choose to build infrastructure and my military was fairly weak. Since I cannot annex any cities, puppets are idiot in terms of choosing what to build. At the end, I got attacked several times until Venice was conquered. My science advancements were not very good either because of having one city and a few puppets that I got by Merchant of Venice. This made is harder to defend with old type of military units. Another difficulty was to maintain a good income. Although, Venice has advantages of having double trade routes, whenever an empire declares war, they immediately take away half of the routes. Then I have to build those ships again with my ONLY city that I can control which makes is very very hard to focus on other stuff. You get the idea. It made it impossible for me to go on after a while because of the numerous attacks. In the meantime I was scared to start new trade routes because there are many many number of ships that enemies control. I just cannot do anything to the trade routes. AI knows where they are at! I cannot find my enemies' ships though!..

In the second one, I started with Austria so that I can annex some CSs. I wanted to be more aggressive in terms of expansioning. I had around 10 cities. However, at the end, I got beaten by Brazil's tourism. They were producing around 500 per turn!! I don't think anybody can keep up with that number at all. This time I made sure I had enough military, I was the 2nd in science after Brazil after the midgame. I had about 50 excess happiness and positive income (around 200 per turn) however, as I said it was impossible to keep up with that tourism. Brazil got the cultural victory.

In summary, I have a couple of concerns:
- AI sells an excess resource around 8 GPT but buys about 5-6 GPT which is very dumb to me.
- AI knows where your trade ships are and whenever a war is declared to you, you see about half of your routes are plundered. This makes is very not possible to have a healthy economy. It is very naive to expect no war declarations.
- How can AI achieve happiness more than 100? I always see some nations do that in my deity games. Wow I mean. Then they have about 10000 gold and many GPT income. It makes a huge difference and it is not possible to keep up with that. I always see some nations are allies with CSs and I need 137 or more points needed to be allies with those CSs. I don't ever have that much money. I mean I can do that with 1-2 but I cannot do that to achieve WC victory.

There are 2 options: Either I make eveyrthing wrong or there must be some changes in the game to be more fair and competitive? lol. I accept any mistake I might have been doing.

Venice game: Archipelago
Austria: World
8 nations - standart speed etc.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Look for some Venice guides, it should be very easy to win archipelago map with them. You go for gold economy and buy stuff not BUILD. Make sure you have a navy that can protect the routes. Not that hard, all you need is some galleases to upgrade to frigates and three privateers. You need to keep capturing more ships. Prize ships promo stays on destroyers so later you can get lots of subs that way.

You don't need CS allies, just two policies in patro to be perma friends, then one more at the end to buy the rest.

Since you survive till the end you must not make everything wrong, just need to hone your skills. On deity AI will win if you dont stop them, so if you see Brazil pulling ahead to CV, get people to DoW him and come in yourself to relieve him of his cities, wonders and artifacts.

archipelago venice is extremely straightforward. Buy out a CS w/ Merchant of Venice with some gale asses to supplement your own while teching education into quick to astro and then oxford navigation. Mass upgrade and destroy everyone with frigates+privateers. This game should almost be unlosable with proper tech timings, you will have a good 50-70 turns of unhindered rampage.

Defending trade routes on an archipelago while warmongering is challenging. Submarines and control of the city states are key to minimzing cargo ship losses.

As for that Austria game-if you have 50 excess happiness then you should either be buying out more city states, warmongering, or growing your cities more-at +50 I would likely be trying to do all three. Hoarding happiness isn't a good thing. The usual traditional pre-BNW remedy for cultural states still works-just go kill them.

1. Decide what victory u want.
2. If u want domination, go frigates as proposed in previous post. Btw you can do it with any civ. Ottomans are the best for it.
3. If u want culture... well I do not think Venice suits for it.
4. If u want science - be friendly, do not buy other civ cs, do not put spies, do not declare war. In my last three games for Venice I got DoF with nearly all civ.
5. And of course select nice start.
6. You should have 150+ gpt on turn 150.

Maxym said:

Look for some Venice guides, it should be very easy to win archipelago map with them. You go for gold economy and buy stuff not BUILD. Make sure you have a navy that can protect the routes. Not that hard, all you need is some galleases to upgrade to frigates and three privateers. You need to keep capturing more ships. Prize ships promo stays on destroyers so later you can get lots of subs that way.

You don't need CS allies, just two policies in patro to be perma friends, then one more at the end to buy the rest.

Since you survive till the end you must not make everything wrong, just need to hone your skills. On deity AI will win if you dont stop them, so if you see Brazil pulling ahead to CV, get people to DoW him and come in yourself to relieve him of his cities, wonders and artifacts.

Click to expand...

Thanks.
To capture ships, I need to declare war, right? Wouldn't that be problematic in terms of diplomacy as every nation can turn against me?

Perma friends for CS: I need to pledge to protect them, right? I did that with Venice however warmonger nations kept taking tribute from them which forced me to choose sides every time.

How can you get people to DoW a nation? DoW means war declaration, right? What do you mean by "come in yourself to relieve him of his cities, wonders and artifacts."?

Fragamemnon said:

archipelago venice is extremely straightforward. Buy out a CS w/ Merchant of Venice with some gale asses to supplement your own while teching education into quick to astro and then oxford navigation. Mass upgrade and destroy everyone with frigates+privateers. This game should almost be unlosable with proper tech timings, you will have a good 50-70 turns of unhindered rampage.

Defending trade routes on an archipelago while warmongering is challenging. Submarines and control of the city states are key to minimzing cargo ship losses.

As for that Austria game-if you have 50 excess happiness then you should either be buying out more city states, warmongering, or growing your cities more-at +50 I would likely be trying to do all three. Hoarding happiness isn't a good thing. The usual traditional pre-BNW remedy for cultural states still works-just go kill them.

Click to expand...

Well I chose to spend money to upgrade military unit which I made many! Therefore, I didn't have money to spend on CSs. That might be a strategical mistake. I find it quite difficult to attack when there are lots of enemy units around especially ships. Moreover, their tech is very good so that their city can take down one of my units per turn. I can manage that though.

FrostK said:

1. Decide what victory u want.
2. If u want domination, go frigates as proposed in previous post. Btw you can do it with any civ. Ottomans are the best for it.
3. If u want culture... well I do not think Venice suits for it.
4. If u want science - be friendly, do not buy other civ cs, do not put spies, do not declare war. In my last three games for Venice I got DoF with nearly all civ.
5. And of course select nice start.
6. You should have 150+ gpt on turn 150.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I just wonder if it is possible to DoF with nearly all civs. That is an achievement.