The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game #7 - Ethiopia

IronfighterXXX said:

Actually if Firaxsis made deity AI were able winning sub 250T (what with theirs bonuses shouldn't be problem - just prioritize science tech, secularism, filling GP slots, etc) 90% deity players will move back to emperor ;

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The truth is that the game could be made so no human alive could ever win if they wanted to create such a game. However I do not believe 90% of players would move away from Deity just because the AI could win sub 250. What would happen is that players who play Deity would adjust the way they play the game and learn the methods to be able to win before the AIs pret turn 250 ability. Most of us players who play Deity is because of the challenge and not because of how fun it is or Role Playing. Although we do play because it is fun it is the challenge part that makes it fun.

I have said this many times about the game. Since they allow me to be able to win the game by around turn 350 on Deity I will not be trying to adjust my game play to win sub 300, 250, or even 200 because it is not mandatory to win in that time frame. So if they want me to finish the game pre turn 250 they need to make the AI win pre 250 and I will change my game play. Also if they do change the game to win pre turn 250 you will be missing out on all the late era fun that can be had so I don't think they will really make Deity that hard.

nickytootricky said:

Presumably what you mean is he "was usually right",

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Yes, thanks for corrected me. Maybe I should learn english more instead of playing civ

My 2 Kc.

IronfighterXXX said:

About small piety strategy.

I really hoped that this by far the worst 'strategy' on this forum gone into oblivion

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I think you have completely missed the point that Small Piety is not aimed at converting people to playing it all the time, trying to get a consistent win out of it. It's just an option for you to try if you want, some of the time, as a different alternative to Tall Science or Wide Conquest. The strategy guide is chock-full of philosophical references that highlight how the strategy is radically different, yet can work if you want to play it that way, and think that it's fun to do so. It even admits it cannot work 100% of the time, because it needs ingredients for an early religion.

But for someone who doesn't like the strategy to actively dislike and disparage it as you have, is to completely miss the point. It's there if you want it. It's like the Jewish religion. It's really not trying to convert anyone to it, but if you want to try it, it's there.

I link tommynt opinion on this 'strategy':

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13084273&postcount=20

I really miss Tommy (seems he abandonned civ) , he wasn't the friendliest person on earth but was usually right

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I wish I could say I was surprised that you like what Tommynt has to say about it. He was easily the most obnoxious forum poster on any of the 50+ forums I've ever been a member, and I can only hope that the admin finally realised that he was a troll and told him to sling his hook. The reason I'm not surprised is because quite often, your brashness, for me, borders on being as vitriolic as his.

I'd even considered that you might be the same person. There are a lot of similarities.

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nickytootricky said:

Presumably what you mean is he "was usually right", in the sense that he was one iof the better players, which I'm sure he is/was. Maybe you can become the new tommy! You seem to be better than most of us, are obsessed by turn time instead of victory % (presumably because you're so good that you will win anyway), and can't seem to put yourself in the majority of civ (even Deity) player's shoes (which tommy was rather obnoxiously good at, if I remember).

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Yes, putting oneself in other's shoes is definitely the best prescription here. And obnoxious was/is definitely the right word.

IronfighterXXX said:

Yes, thanks for corrected me. Maybe I should learn english more instead of playing civ

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Maybe while you're at it, you could learn some humility? That's a polite request, not a demand.

Fluphen Azine said:

I have said this many times about the game. Since they allow me to be able to win the game by around turn 350 on Deity I will not be trying to adjust my game play to win sub 300, 250, or even 200 because it is not mandatory to win in that time frame. So if they want me to finish the game pre turn 250 they need to make the AI win pre 250 and I will change my game play. Also if they do change the game to win pre turn 250 you will be missing out on all the late era fun that can be had so I don't think they will really make Deity that hard.

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Yes, I understand your point of view but you know we are talking about last (8) difficulty level in game - yes I think it should be hard. For people who want to fool around or roleplaying there is SEVEN other difficulties. I'm amazed that people want to play on hardest difficulty level and still have easy game.

consentient said:

I think you have completely missed the point that Small Piety is not aimed at converting people to playing it all the time, trying to get a consistent win out of it. It's just an option for you to try if you want, some of the time, as a different alternative to Tall Science or Wide Conquest.

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OK so why it is posted in strategy and tips forum, it really should be called curiosity and posted in general forum. You know because AI is so terrible at war I'm sure I can win DomV with only melee units - should I write article about it and called it 'only melee strategy' just because I managed win

consentient said:

I'd even considered that you might be the same person. There are a lot of similarities.

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As tommynt is/was a great player I will take it as a compliment

Wasn't the difficulty mostly lowered after BNW (accidently) ? I think I remember the AI getting a lot of sub300 and being more agressive early in GK.

On a side note I also do not like this small piety strategy. It's not that it's not the fastest, it's that I don't see what is interesting about it. Taking piety and playing 3 cities seems like a strange idea. By comparison honor/commerce from peddroelm isn't the fastest thing but at least it makes some sense and I see the fun in it.
However, it may have to do with the fact that I don't think Diplo is interesting to begin with and is somewhat of a consolation prize when your other plan fails.

It's fine though to post sub-optimal strategy on the forum as long as it's clear this is not necessarily the fastest way to win. Also when advising a new player looking for help I'd teach him to play the more efficient way before teaching the fancy stuff. If I'd spend all my time getting the absolute fastest I'd play 4 city tradition every games but lately I've had a lot of fun trying to figure out how to be optimal while going wide liberty for example.

BNW is SO much easier than GnK I can't even...
The AI is quite horrible at implementing the added features in BNW; in GnK they'd just expand, expand expand and crush/conquer you like crazy because going wide was the way to win.

Now gold and culture no longer scales with wideness, and ideological penalty has been implemented, as well as research cost penalty per city sometimes the AI just simply implodes (i.e Atilla with 124721389718327 cities getting -100 from ideology pressure and being super behind on tech) if this were GnK he'd have probably launched and be 2 eras ahead of everyone else; and the AI somehow coup much less in BNW (used to be your spies get promoted from couping, not anymore) Rationalism was +17% rather than 10% and you could buy GS right away from just opening it.

Yeah I'd probably remove the tech penalty altogether. It was really unnecessary to begin with.

IronfighterXXX said:

Yes, I understand your point of view but you know we are talking about last (8) difficulty level in game - yes I think it should be hard. For people who want to fool around or roleplaying there is SEVEN other difficulties. I'm amazed that people want to play on hardest difficulty level and still have easy game.

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I do not want the hardest level to be easy. I loved it back in GNK when the AI would try to roll you on turn 40 with 20 units. I also loved it when the AI would win on turn 275. I wish they would change the Deity level and make it so the AI would win around turn 240-250 every game. This would make me play more optimal and actually care about my turn time finish on Deity. However, since they only want to make the game easier for a wider range of players so they can sell more copies of the game and make more money I will not change my style to win pre turn 250/200 until they change the game back the way it used to be or even harder!

If they want to make Deity easier it is not my fault. They changed the game for the reasons that they did it and I am only playing it the way I want to play it. You can't expect a player like me to play for sub 200 turn time wins when it does not matter since they let you go to turn 350 and still win. If I had more of an incentive to change my style to win pre turn 200 that would be enough as well but it isn't like you get your name in lights or any money or any reward of any kind finishing 100 turns earlier than another player. You still win which is fine by me but I would rather they change the game so that you have to win pre turn 250 or 200! I even tried to create a website for mostly Deity Players Only that would give a player more incentive to win faster and earn rank/promotions/medals to help me/players care about what I/they did in the game and how fast I/they won but since I had little to no player support I do not see any reason to put the time and effort into it anymore unless I do get more interest in the future.

I also do not think it is fair to judge an SP strategy because it does not work in MP. MP is by far harder but if your talking about 6 player FFA it is a joke anyway with all the team play that goes on that you do not see inside of the private chat. I respect 1v1 MP and it's strategies much more than 6 player FFA. It is pretty obvious that most of the SP strategies for stand/stand maps against the AI really do not work well inside of 6 player FFA MP or even 1v1 MP since it is a completely different game usually set to quick/small for 6 player FFA or quick/duel for 1v1 MP!

OK so why it is posted in strategy and tips forum, it really should be called curiosity and posted in general forum.

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This is silly anyway... I see 10-20 threads inside of strategy & tips that do not belong here either so if you move that guide you should move other threads as well that have no strategy or tips inside of it at all. At least this 18,000 word strategy has STRATEGY AND TIPS inside of it! I have said this before that Game Series Threads have no business inside of Strategy and Tips as well and should have it's own Forum or Group or be found in the "OTHER" section.

kb27787 said:

Though mind you adwcta's strategy IS letting yourself get outclassed (as in you are not boxing in the same weight as the AI at all... being 20+ pop and dozens of techs behind), and yet still winning by a victory condition that is not at all contingent on outdoing the AI in science, military, or culture/tourism (nor even on gold as they probably have more gold than you).

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Maybe we do disagree about what being outclassed is. When a player is allowing the AI to get a huge tech lead on purpose they are not being outclassed just like Ali put the "Rope a Dope" on Foreman. He was not being outclassed for 7 rounds because he was allowing this boxer to punch himself out and when it was time to strike he did so and knocked him out. You might not know about Rocky Marciano but he used to kind of do the same thing in boxing falling behind until the end or he got mad and knocked out his opponent. The same goes for what this player is doing when he lets himself fall behind on purpose. Now if the player is trying as hard as they can and the AI is 20% ahead in tech and the player can not win ... now you can say the AI outclassed that player.

And I thought I was the only one who felt BNW Deity around G&K Immortal

anyway back on topic, finish coming up soon hopefully, was my first day at a new job so I couldn't really finish last night

Fluphen Azine said:

I do not want the hardest level to be easy. I loved it back in GNK when the AI would try to roll you on turn 40 with 20 units. I also loved it when the AI would win on turn 275. I wish they would change the Deity level and make it so the AI would win around turn 240-250 every game. This would make me play more optimal and actually care about my turn time finish on Deity. However, since they only want to make the game easier for a wider range of players so they can sell more copies of the game and make more money I will not change my style to win pre turn 250/200 until they change the game back the way it used to be or even harder!

If they want to make Deity easier it is not my fault. They changed the game for the reasons that they did it and I am only playing it the way I want to play it. You can't expect a player like me to play for sub 200 turn time wins when it does not matter since they let you go to turn 350 and still win. If I had more of an incentive to change my style to win pre turn 200 that would be enough as well but it isn't like you get your name in lights or any money or any reward of any kind finishing 100 turns earlier than another player. You still win which is fine by me but I would rather they change the game so that you have to win pre turn 250 or 200! I even tried to create a website for mostly Deity Players Only that would give a player more incentive to win faster and earn rank/promotions/medals to help me/players care about what I/they did in the game and how fast I/they won but since I had little to no player support I do not see any reason to put the time and effort into it anymore unless I do get more interest in the future.

I also do not think it is fair to judge an SP strategy because it does not work in MP. MP is by far harder but if your talking about 6 player FFA it is a joke anyway with all the team play that goes on that you do not see inside of the private chat. I respect 1v1 MP and it's strategies much more than 6 player FFA. It is pretty obvious that most of the SP strategies for stand/stand maps against the AI really do not work well inside of 6 player FFA MP or even 1v1 MP since it is a completely different game usually set to quick/small for 6 player FFA or quick/duel for 1v1 MP!

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nah, if they made deity in BNW win on t240-250 I think 90% of the deity players right now would play on immortal and CV would be non-existent (simply because it's way too risky) and every game would be early DomV, cheesy DV or fast SV.

GnK win times were faster because of different game mechanics and SP (linear correlation between wideness and bpt, cpt, gpt), which made civs like France just crazy strong back in the day now they are kinda useless if you don't go for CV; anyhow in BNW turn times are going to be slower in general. It's not like the AI got any dumber, it's just the game has more depth now and it's harder to program the AI to be good at balancing multiple factors.

Not to mention how crazy the rationalism tree was back then such that any AI that went piety would fall behind 99% of the time. That was the thing I really didn't like in GnK.

Although occasionally AIs will win t270 to 280-ish (Korea I'm looking at you) as long as you leave them alone. The decreased difficulty in BNW also largely stems from the AIs having culture victory as their default choice (judging from the popularity of WC proposals; art funding by far is more popular than science funding) and only go for science when it's VERY late game; too late to catch up to human players; even Korea will go for culture in BNW. Unfortunately CV is too hard and too multi-faceted for the AI to be good at (they won't use diplomacy or think about getting OB, or routes, and they make GMs early and bomb you for a mere 100tpt, etc.)

OTOH AIs that go straight for science are quite OK. (I'm sure you've seen deity Russia or Iroquois run away from time to time)

As for the boxing analogy I doubt the AIs get tired or anything like in boxing (and the strategy is easy to backfire too, because if you don't win by KO, you'd lose easily from the scorecard); it's more kinda like at the end of 7 rnds the judges decide to put up a sign that says "whoever pays us the most money will get to win the match regardless of the score in the previous rnds", and then you sell your house, your wife, your kids and put all your money into it whereas your MUCH richer opponent somehow is to stupid to use his money to win. Then you win just like that. But in the occasion that the other boxer decides to use his money, then you really lose while putting up an embarrassing showing throughout the match.
OTOH if you decided to let the AIs be 2 eras ahead (just because you can) THEN growing, racing, catching up with them and beating them to the spaceship fair and square, then OK, I'd accept that analogy. (but then again if you had the skills to do that you wouldn't get that far behind to begin with anyway, even if you go piety)

Well, if Deity AI could consistently win in the 250-270 range, I'd certainly have a lot less wins than I have now

stormtrooper412 said:

Well, if Deity AI could consistently win in the 250-270 range, I'd certainly have a lot less wins than I have now

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Not me I would just change my game play style. I would really work hard on Domination and win pre turn 250 most of the games if I could. When you warmonger you start to take away turn times from the AI so once you have control of half of the map it is unlikely that the AI will runaway with the game and you will be able to push the game past the 250 turn win time. If you control 3/4 of the map you can start to work on any VC you want unless you have someone like Korea all alone and untouched but that is most likely not going to be the case if you are playing with bribes in your games and when you warmonger you usually are going to do this.

If the AI could win 240-250 it would mostly hurt the Peaceful Players going for SV or CV and it would not really hurt the Warmongers nearly as much. Now if you make the AI move and shoot and always go full Rationalism it will make things harder for sure but it will just be a matter of days for people to figure out how to win. Back in G&K when the AI would try to roll you on turn 30-50 your mantra was war... and war early... and often!

Yeah I remember I struggled really really badly on G&K Immortal, only managed to fluke a total one OCC win, I got my ass handed to me more times than I could remember

edit: weeeeell, it was turn 253 when I gave up. When everyone else around you is a backstabbing psychopath, there's no way you can get out of it without getting attacked towards the end and if you have no military like I didn't, well, things just went south in a hurry. Too bad

IronfighterXXX said:

OK so why it is posted in strategy and tips forum, it really should be called curiosity and posted in general forum. You know because AI is so terrible at war I'm sure I can win DomV with only melee units - should I write article about it and called it 'only melee strategy' just because I managed win :crazy eye:

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Because it IS a strategy. A strategy. One of many. Very different, definitely less consistent than SOME others, but definitely reproducible FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO USE IT. Bashing it is pointless. Like going on an art forum and saying that Kandisky was talentless.

Actually, I think that Small Piety is more viable and less of a curiosity than your sub-T200 CV on a cooked map. Such cooked maps are a lot rarer than the pre-requisite for Small Piety (a source of faith). Therefore they are more of a curiosity. Which is more of a curiosity: the skunk or the Komodo dragon?

Acken said:

On a side note I also do not like this small piety strategy. It's not that it's not the fastest it's that I don't see what is interesting about it.

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Religion in general is underpowered in the current state of the game, but some people find Religion really interesting. I played Small Piety with the Historical Religions mod and had a great time.

It's fine though to post sub-optimal strategy on the forum as long as it's clear this is not necessarily the fastest way to win.

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The OP of the Small Piety thread DOES say this in his guide, so I really think you and the others should just leave it alone. Hardly anyone reads it, so there is absolutely zero impact on the board in general. You're arguing for nothing.

stormtrooper412 said:

When everyone else around you is a backstabbing psychopath

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IMO, BNW was a night-and-day improvement on AI Diplo. On G&K there was no sense to what they were doing at all. Someone who had been your friend for 3 eras would suddenly attack you for no reason. BNW is imperfect, but at least the Diplo makes an ounce of sense compared with G&K.

It made perfect sense in the context:

Those who struggle with this map may want to play my save (I managed to eliminate one headache, but there are still quite a few remaining); peaceful no more! This is one of the few times I've conquered on deity! (and it's quite curious how eliminating a civ that early on only gives you the smallest warmonger penalty: they "only" have some early concerns about your warmongering, I have to thank the most recent patch which severely reduced ancient era warmonger penalty for that)

wow, so you DoWed them on turn 5 and they somehow decided it's smart to move their settler in to be captured? Crazy!

Of course I'm still gonna go Culture Autocracy on their asses. But it's a good question when because I have a new job now

Actually the strategy is if you move your settler and meet AIs 2nd settler really soon (like before T5) you then settle a city, DOW and kill it. This works pretty well if AI is close and I did it on this DCL. Not to mention that AI is kinda lost afterwards and you can enslave many workers and pillage his farms.

Crazy! I tried this out, and while I settled in a crap location, I now have a total of 4 workers (one an ex settler)