Help with Deity

A pretty good strat that I have been employing with the russians on diety is to start out with a few warriors (3 max) and explore out as far as you can. meanwhile tech to bronze and work on pumping out a settler from your cap while you simultaneously try to hit 100 gold. Then you have two settlers very early.

Hopefully in your explorations you have found two things, 1 - a good spot with fish and hammers for your science city (2 forests is good but 3 with a fish is much better) and 2 - a good spot for a production city.

With your science city start building colossus asap. With your production city build a single archer and start work on a barracks. In both cities push production. With your gold you can now road up all three cities if necessary (really you only need a road to your production city).

Now you're set, once the barracks is built start churning out vet archers, and once colossus is built you will rarely fall behind in tech. You have two things going for you now, great defense, and good tech for teching to cats or whatever else your goal is. I usually try to take out at least one other civ once I have cats (2 cat armies + a few spies and an archer army for D).

Use your capital to churn out settlers every 5 turns or so.

Lots of settlers is always a good idea. The Colossus? Not so much. It is 100 hammers to double your science (or gold) in one city. You could instead build a library for 40 hammers which will double your science in that city. You can get both, but still hammering out the Colossus just isn't very cost-effective. You might rush it with a real early Great Builder, but I'd rather save him for the East India Company, which you can get pretty quickly with all those settlers. The EIC will give you +50% trade in all cities as opposed to double trade in one city. Really the best thing to do is don't bother with any multipliers in the early game, just get more settlers (after getting the Republic government). More cities are like multipliers, but they are cheaper with settlers running 20 hammers vs. a library's 40 hammers, market's 60 hammers and Colossus' 100.

It's a good idea to specialize your cities, like you suggest. But mostly, just having lots of cities (most of them doing science) will really get the AI to back off because you'll get far ahead in tech.

A couple more small points, you don't really need to worry about archers right away. It's best to defend with warriors and put out a couple more settlers before you start teching. The AI will tend not to get very aggressive in the BCs unless you leave cities wide open. For some reason the AI does not build warrior armies ever, so you won't face opposing armies until they get up to Iron Working and can produce legions.

The other thing is that you don't really need vet archers to defend because you get the loyalty bonus, which is basically the same thing. It's nice to have a barracks, but I wouldn't prioritize it over settlers. Basically all you need to win in this game is lots and lots of settlers. Anything else is just for fun. I also don't like to have just archers for defense. Mix in some legion, horse and/or catapult armies and kill those invaders before they reach you. Then you can send those armies to hit back at your enemy. This kind of strategy will serve you well if you decide to play online.

For some reason the AI does not build warrior armies ever, so you won't face opposing armies until they get up to Iron Working and can produce legions.

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Which in diety, happens quickly.

By the way this strat is not just for Russians. Which is why you build barracks. If you don't want the micro of a million cities and just want to defend against the AI while you tech with a few cities, this is a good way to do it.

Also, building colossus is a great choice early, because the AI will rarely build it first. They always go for Hanging Gardens and Great lighthouse, which means you will have a super science city very early and you won't need a million cities all with libraries (which takes a bit longer than just building colosuss in one city). Trust me I've played as America and built 40+ cities before 100AD, and while its a great way to bowl over the AI, it's not so good if you want a relaxing game with less micro.

But mostly, just having lots of cities (most of them doing science) will really get the AI to back off because you'll get far ahead in tech.

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In my experience the AI will rarely back off, and will declare war on you regardless of how powerful you are. Of course this means you will be crushing their endless supply of legion armies every single turn, but they will still send units at you even if it's a no-win scenario for them.

Horserush said:

In my experience the AI will rarely back off, and will declare war on you regardless of how powerful you are. Of course this means you will be crushing their endless supply of legion armies every single turn, but they will still send units at you even if it's a no-win scenario for them.

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Well, you can take it from me, there's a point where they will be cowed sufficiently and won't raise a finger to stop you, even as you build the world bank or send up spaceship parts or whatever. But yeah, there's also stupidity like attacking tanks with legions. The AI will do that too. You have to be really far ahead, even more so than tanks vs. legions, for the AI to just ignore you.

A few city strategy is more fun in SP to me. If I'm playing SP, I will rarely build any settlers at all because the game just gets too easy. There's really no drawback at all to making dozens of cities. The AI will never do this. It winds up being a stupid easy win. Sometimes I like settling inland with Russia on as many plains as possible and just growing Moscow as big as I can as quickly as I can with a granary. This is not a good strategy and there's no reason to do it, but it's cool to have a gigantic city with lots of buildings. Sadly, you can gain population much faster by making settlers and it's way more effective.

I still wouldn't hammer out the Colossus though. 100 hammers is too much in the early game. Maybe do it with Rome. Then it's just 50. But even then, if you aren't all up in the AI's face, it can get to Invention reasonably quickly so how many turns are you going to get out of it?

These are great strategies. But for those who are new to playing it, if you are passive and not aggressive you will never win Deity, that goes the same for Multiplayer. I took out the entire map with just a horsemen army, catapult army, and archers or musketeers to defend them. I had any victory in the palm of my hand and won Domination by 1700AD. Horsemen are just as strong as Legions but can move faster and get better upgrades.