getting a domination on deity

EDIT: so i just started a pangea map to prove my point, world age 5 billion so it should be nice and flat for me:
http://s1.postimg.org/x58pghpri/gggg.jpg

?????? whats with all the mountains blocking frances second city? gonna take 30 turns just to get to his capital.
the only other AI nearby is attila, its either him or shaka in my games, please!
other than that im surrounded by city states and my capital has bad production. starting over!!

ive been trying to get a win on deity, but it seems im always getting the wrong kind of map:

im usually totally isolated, like surrounded only by city-states when i wanna try a domination game

i never get good expansion areas, theres -never- a good hill tile with food and a unique lux within range

ive watched a few lets plays, and everything just seems to fall into place in those, theres always a neighbor civ capital right nearby, building wonders and having flat terrain all around, worker steal into composite rush works like a charm. i know how to do that but it just doesnt seem possible when im playing.


take ackens recent chinese domination game, the dude had 4 archers and a warrior lined up to take experience of a city state, perfectly reasonable stuff that i expect to do when going for domination, but my CSs are always in the jungle or on a land bridge.
ive been trying different map setups, and i avoid water-based maps due to AI not handling them that well. but ive found that maps like great plains or oval always have the same shape and features, never any surprises and im always on a lonely peninsula or in the jungle.

ive been trying for over a week, doing a few games every day, but i cant even seem to get a decent worker steal due to my location, and im not gonna win on deity without at least some advantages.

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ive now started using legendary start in options, and im cheating so i can see the whole map before i spend 40 turns scouting a terrible spawn.

not surprisingly the games lose a bit of their magic if ive seen the whole map already, even if i reload away the cheats when i find a start i like.

im not crazy about continents or islands because its basically 2 smaller games of civ and im only playing in 1 of them

.

i guess im just ranting cause my last games have been so terrible, but is there any map settings that make a nice pangea type map where i might actually be near another civ?

what does pangea plus do compared to normal pangea?

world age 5 makes the game flatter, and im guessing climate whatever affects jungles, so those seem fun.

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tl;dr how do i play domination if i never have a civ neighbor close by?

Sorry to hear you're having problems with the map scripts. They do indeed suck.

It's really hard to find a map where:-

- the proximity of AIs is reasonable (i.e. not surrounded, not remote)
- there are some CS with which you can interact
- the terrain is OK

etc, etc.

Why don't you play some of the DCL games? They have carefully-chosen maps that are deemed to be interesting by the person who rolled and/or submitted them.

Did you actually play the China DCL? I update the spreadsheet for the series, and I can't see you listed. It's pretty good for practising Domination. DCL 17 (Germany) and DCL 4 are also good for learning.

Spawning next to Attila and Shaka doesn't mean game over.

Once you have CBs and Horses, Attila isn't too much of a threat. He will just pump out Battering Rams stupidly. Play defensive, then when you sense the tide is changing, swarm him with everything you got and take him out.

With Shaka, hit him hard from the start and smother him before he gets to Civil Service.

DCL #2 is good practise against Attila and DCL #4 against Zulus.

I am pretty dedicated to learning better warmongering myself, so if you wanna swap tips via PM, feel free.

2nd game of today, rome is -kind of- close, but tucked away behind a mountain. russia is really far and the other civs are behind city states and weird landbridges even tho its pangea :/

http://s12.postimg.org/4593aenv0/ddddddd.jpg

im gonna try your DCL maps although they are usually small continents from what ive seen, and id rather not deal with boats

most recent tip i learned was to ask every AI if they will pay you to go to war when u want to go to war anyways.

Actually, I never ask AIs to go to war with me. 95% of the time they say 'no', and if they say 'yes', you are at war immediately. I prefer surprise attacks down roads.

The biggest tip I can give you is beelining for units that can crush the AI: XBs, Cannons, UUs, etc.

i was saying if im gonna go to war with attila, i make that offer to every other civ, usually one of them will pay me a few gold per turn just for declaring war, when i was going to declare war anyways

oh and the DCL maps are standard speed and i like epic to get more turns out of the units im beelining like u said.

part of the problem is that you picked a civ that's fairly crap in conquest if you're not really good at it. I suggest you try the DCL8 to get a feel for it. It's rather OP though (because even I managed a DomV on it) but it's quite fun and meets the conditions you listed. Also, I agree that the DCL16 is a good start as well.

However, saying most are small continents is simply not true and you made that up. For example, both 8 and 16 are Pangaea, and I think only 2 out of 21 were small continents (right?)

I agree that many of the maps are disappointing if you're looking to try out a particular strategy. I've restarted dozens of times -- sometimes immediately on opening, and sometimes after a few turns. It is a shame.

I've been playing the attached map, which I've found quite nice. Not ideal, but I've found it gives me a chance. (I think I've disabled everything inconvenient for sharing -- but apologies if I haven't.)

It's pangaea, standard, standard, with England as your civ. I wanted to try pangaea because I wanted to try the CB rush. I almost made it work!

OP, if you like, we can both play mbbcam's map and compare notes on T150 or something. I'm not the best player on this site but I'm not bad at DomVs and can give you tips if you want?

@consentient

If you want to play the map, I'd be very interested to know how you get on. I seem to be stumbling to my first ever victory on Deity, with lots of mistakes, naturally. I went Liberty, but I'm tempted to try and play it again with Honor (or Honour, as we like to write in England) to see how it differs. But I'm not sure the map is suitable for that (unless you're peddroelm). Then again, I'm not sure I really ought to try and play it again. I've spent too much time on it already...

Ok I'll start playing now. Without looking, I'm tempted to go Tradition with England in order to tech to Machinery faster, but I'll take a look. I'm also from England. Specifically Suffolk. One county over. But I live in the Czech Republic. Cambridge is my favourite town in England. You're lucky to live there. I hope to open my own school there one day.

[EDIT: Can't play it. You have the map packs enabled. You need to disable them if you want to share your maps for everyone to play. Or better yet, just delete them, cuz they are (as we say in my neck of the woods) 'gash'.]

I'd better read up on how to disable things properly. I thought I had done. Do either of these work?

*No, those won't work, either -- I've just tried. I'll see if I can find another solution. Don't hold your breath!*

Yes, Cambridge is a good place. I grew up here, but I've been away a lot. I spent ten years in Italy, teaching English. In fact, I have two good friends, whom I met as children in my first year there, who each have a Czech wife! Two brothers, who married two best friends. I liked the Czech Republic, though I was only there for a week.

Try this one and see if it works.

gnubbish said:

2nd game of today, rome is -kind of- close, but tucked away behind a mountain. russia is really far and the other civs are behind city states and weird landbridges even tho its pangea :/

http://s12.postimg.org/4593aenv0/ddddddd.jpg

im gonna try your DCL maps although they are usually small continents from what ive seen, and id rather not deal with boats

most recent tip i learned was to ask every AI if they will pay you to go to war when u want to go to war anyways.

Click to expand...

What is the problem with Rome on this map ? Just go from the south no ?
This isn't the best map and you won't get a record time out of it but I don't see what would make it too hard. If crossbos aren't sufficient you always have artilleries.

The other one I'll agree that France is isolated and I find it weird if you picked 5Billion

The only VC where the map really screws you is "peaceful" CV on Deity and that is more in the sense of multiple +60k culture runaways spawning than terrain. If you feel you cannot take someone out early on with Composites or Crossbows, you can always do a Tradition build for science and then push Military Science + Artillery and go on a rampage(may be most desirable on the first map) especially as Babylon.

I won't defend the map scripts, though, they do some weird things sometimes, particularly making Pangaeas that are two continents joined together at one tiny choke that an AI spawns on and cuts you off from all the other civs until you can get Open Borders

OK, I'm gonna play the map 'Elizabeth 6', so if you wanna play too OP, we can compare notes at say T50, T100 and T150, OK?

Light Cleric said:

I won't defend the map scripts, though, they do some weird things sometimes, particularly making Pangaeas that are two continents joined together at one tiny choke that an AI spawns on and cuts you off from all the other civs until you can get Open Borders

Click to expand...

If you won't defend the map scripts then I will - that Pangaea map you just described sounds awesome. Would lead to a really interesting game! I wouldn't want to be able to expect the same, predictable map design each time. I fully embrace the randomness and uniqueness of each map and it adds another dimension of having to play each game differently based on the map and civs.

T130ish on the 'Elizabeth 6' map

BruinBound said:

If you won't defend the map scripts then I will - that Pangaea map you just described sounds awesome. Would lead to a really interesting game! I wouldn't want to be able to expect the same, predictable map design each time. I fully embrace the randomness and uniqueness of each map and it adds another dimension of having to play each game differently based on the map and civs.

Click to expand...

I feel like the map scripts haven't kept up with the mechanics changes.

I used to be okay with the weird map things until BNW moved Open Borders to Civil Service. Now it's not an uncommon scenario to be locked off from meeting 3-4 or possibly more civs because an AI is blocking that choke point and can't let you through even if it wants to because it now takes us a few thousand years to understand the idea of letting people pass through our territory. Until at least turn 65-70(the earliest AIs start to get Civil Service on Deity) you're just screwed and embarking via Optics helps you get by about .01% of the time.

It's similar to how I feel like normal maps are about 10-15% too small. It still feels like they were designed for when you only needed 2 tiles between cities instead of 3. I don't actually know if they were resized or not but it feels like they weren't. Going wide in Civ V is difficult enough as it is just from a mechanics standpoint, the lack of land makes it that much harder.

@consentient

Interesting -- I was expecting you to slice through everything!

I played the opening twice, because I messed things up the first time, and I'm trying to learn. The first time I went to war with Babylon, was joined by another AI, and snatched the capital from under their noses. They clearly didn't like this, and a short time later they overwhelmed me. So the second time I let them capture the capital. I made peace, then went to war with the second AI a bit later when I was better prepared. I then managed to keep things going by stepping from city to city until I had captured two other capitals. By then things were beginning to slow down, and bombers made their first appearance. I haven't played beyond that (t245) because I don't know what to do, and in any case I achieved the main object of the exercise, which was to prove to myself that I could take a few capitals with CBs then Longbows.

Let me know how you progress.

In a 'normal' scenario, I'd stop playing here, and think about what I could learn. As it is, the only thing I could take from this is that sometimes the AI does what it really ought to do, and sometimes the strategy you chose just isn't the right one. Not sure I could have done much different.