How to Tranisition From Immortal to Deity in a Domination Vic

fatlonelynerd

Chieftain
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Aug 11, 2013
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Have been playing a lot lately and mainly stick to Attila or Shaka as my warmongers though Oda Genghis are good as well. On immortal it's pretty easy win on all standard.

When I try deity the overall feeling is I get to take one capital and just get attacked by other civs and die by turn 150ish they all come in storming with muskets and cannons vs my horse archers/trebs and garrisoned longswords in citadels as was my last game.

Even after making allies and ensuring that everyone on my continent has a negative opinion of my main target. When that happens the second I take the capital, 2 denounces and then all of my cities are swarmed. I went back to a save and tried again and just gave up from frustration rather than playing out a 4 to 2 city and trying to come back when putting so much effort into production and the taking of that target.

Started tradition and mixed liberty. Grabbed temple of art by turn 40, pyramids/hanging garden was really lucky with the marble next to my capital. Expanded 2x near my capital for some luxuries and horses. Had a nice diversity and perfect start yet I couldn't place them in the ideal spot due to being surrounded by both carthage and the shoshone. The shoshone denied me a multi river and like 3 horse area. I think my biggest mistake was going for the temple of art and not expanding to that spot instantly. Yet my capital was huge and able to produce horse archers in a turn and a ls in 3-4. Also got Notre Dame from saving a great engineer.

I watched a few videos of MadDjinn and it's just like the AI never, NEVER attacks him? He just gets to sit back and actually use his strat of spreading a religion in a culture vic attempt. In the Indian game, I watched the first three videos of, He got to make about 4 offensive units as the renaissance hit. Like wut... I guess as Atilla even when just counter attacking and conquering that civ that started it everyone just says you in the end.

Early warmongering is bad is what I have read on the forums but in immortal it seems to be a must to control your continent asap and being able to out tech your rivals Deity no chance vs 3 hordes that just wait for your armies to move and back stab you repeatedly and then when after wiping out that one the label as a war mongering menace gets the 150 death.
 
I usually play huge, diety, marathon, ancient era, pangaea and highland map with 6 or 8 civ, and when i choose play warmongering, i think the best civs are Inca, Shoshone, Mongolia, Zulu and Songhai.

Key play style to success in my game are

First, build 3-5 scouts, pick hut to have weapon upgrade to atleast 2 ranged units. Take care when use warrior to pick the hut. If you tick new random seed you can pick hut and reload XD.
If you are shoshone, its pretty easier to have not only 2-3 scout upgraded but also upgraded to Comp Bow. Remember, more Civs, harder to get more huts, so u shoud try with 6 civ, pangaea or highland map first.
If you are Inca, its quite good for you that your Scout Archer have withdraw Promotion.
Meeting citi state and pick hut give you some free gold, and luckily with a pantheon, choose pantheon like faith healer is top priority to go for war.
Honor, Warrior code, and Professional Army are required, pick them first, asap. When u have those 3 core SP, other SPs are not important.
Go bashing some Barb for some gold, xp and culture if you like, then go to war with 1 city state or neighbor Civ, you can get free worker from them.
Key tech now are Construction and Horseback Riding, u have to have them.
The last of this First, the time for doing those things is about 100 first turns.

Next, your Scout Archer army need Ranged or Logistic Promotion, have to shoot again again again and again to enemy city, thank to 50% extra XP, your unit will up to lv 5 fast.
In normally, you need atleast 25 turn shoot (and be shot) continously to get 100xp (required to have lv 5 unit). DoW around turn 50-80 is best for early lv 5 ranged units. With the Zulu, its only 75 xp required, so the zulu will have fast and many high level ranged units, its truely devastating.
When your ranged units have both those promotions, i think your neighbor has lost its capital XD, and then other start denounce you and then DoW.
Now you need horsemen, use them to last hit the cities. Set spot for Horsemen then strike the killing blow carefully, if you dont want your Horsemen die right the next turn in the burning city by enemy counter attack.
What we do with the cities conquered ? Burn, burn them all XD. The Capital is the only thing cant be Razed, so let they be there, and puppet. Some time u want to puppet a good city (not capital), u must think twice before it, because this pretty city will grow later, and hit directly your empire happiness. Better, and safe is burn, burn, burn XD.
In my experience, Its about 50 turns for you to wipe out a Civ, if not you will meet runaway civ later, the game will be more difficult. 50 turn for a new Puppeted capital is not too hard with your superior army, but better do it asap.

Next 2, the problem of Happiness and gold.
-To have Happiness, its very well that surround capital have many luxuries, so when you puppet a capital, make sure u can handle around 10 unhappiness. Each capital required for average 12 happiness (include yours), it mean about 2 or 3 luxuries, its simple and if you can not manage it, it will be a pain.
-Extra happiness (from Nature Wonder, city state, ...) are used for counter unhappiness from razing, so it must be set atleast extra 8-10 happiness to keep your empire happy.

Gold is the main pain of your War. I usually play with minus gold. The solution for gold come from
-When Razing the city, try to sell all building, the gold gained sometimes very nice.
-Pilage the improvement, its your horsemen duty.
-Trade extra luxuries or Strategic Res for GPT with other civ.
-Try to have some caravans.
-Crush some barb camps.
Other things to have gold like Cities connection or Trading post is hard to have here, so you need them later.
When you play civ like Songhai, gold problem is much more easier to manage, and u can maintain an army to clear barb camp in over the map.

Next 3, about too much Great Generals.
The war give u dozens GG, u need 1 or 2 GG to go with your Conquer army, other you can use for citadel each Capital you captured. They are very important to secure your empire from barb raid and other Civ DoW. Each City may need 1 citadel, try it.
When you reach Renaissance Era, make sure there arnt too much major civs here. If you try to genocide, the angry of other civs remain will rise, some times u can spare the live of a civ, and let them live poorly in a small city. If you have about 2 or 3 civ in Renaissance, your chance of win this game is high. Even they come with musketeer, your superior Crossbowmen can kill them easily (but dont let them have tanks XD).

OK, i think it will help.
 
I have pretty much the same problem as you. Immortal domination is easy, but on diety the AI has so many units that I get bogged down. What I've tried:

Huns - I've had my best success with the huns. I can easily take out one civ, and usually another. If I take honor, all my horse archers will have logistics,range, etc. by then. But the problem is, the upgrade path is a dead end, and they have to face off against musketman, which they can barely scratch, even with all the promos. Still, they seem the most promising.

Assyria - I've tried Assyria a few times but I can't get them to really work. On paper, they sound the strongest with the tech steal. But, it takes me way too long to get them really ramped up vs. the Huns. Even if you get mathmatics + construction + composites + seige towers by turn 50ish, you have a small window before things become obsolete (I've seen cho-ku-nus and longbows at turn 80).

Mongolia - Keshiks are amazing, but if you wait to start attacking before you get them, I feel like you'll never have enough time to conquer everyone. If you don't wait, you're putting off keshiks even longer, and might not have the cash to upgrade chariot archers. I can usually take out 1 - 1.5 civs before gatling guns come out. They can still kill stuff, but it's too slow, and again, bad upgrade path.

England - similar to Mongolia, though at least you can keep upgrading.

Zulu - I've been trying a spear/Impi + cats/trebuchet approach, where you want to get range asap with the Zula UA. I actually had this kind of rolling the first time I tried it, but I took volley before barage II/III, which was dumb. The big problem here is that you need to get your seige upgraded to range before cities can one shot them. I've been trying the slightly damaged sacrificial strategy to keep them safe, which I really don't like because 1) it's super gamey and taking advantage of the AI being dumb and 2) it's not always dependable.

My advice to you is skip the wonders and don't mix trees. But, I don't really know how to solve the time constraints.
 
Playing marathon isn't really worth the time investment for me. I understand all of those concepts and when I play atilla I do the same thing and you do with archers and horsemen with other civs. I feel like it would be best to play the war mongering role with a science heavy civ with that logic of maxing archers. Taking the continent isn't really a problem. It's about being able to actually win the game and have some what of a hope at mid game to late.

Assyria might be the best choice. Being able to specialize and freely catching up fits my play style. Every time I have ever played them I always get some mountainous hill start and it takes like 30 turns to get 1 unit in position to attack.

Marathon gives you the most time to make sure a dominate early game civ gets to win when they are their strongest, I 100% agree with that. I don't want to be that, that tedious about production and food. Using a touch pad makes that a real to do it fast, slow paced.


"My advice to you is skip the wonders and don't mix trees. But, I don't really know how to solve the time constraints. "

I'm too sure about this. Mixing it as I did got me a huge capital. I had 3 cities feeding my war machine capital that was already a pop of 20. Hanging Gardens/ pyramids/temple of art gave me this. Tech was my my biggest enemy but I would catch up with my college coming? I understand the balancing of happiness and aggression. Tech is my biggest enemy.

I looked through maddjinns videos and he doesn't play warmongers like ever. So for horsehockys I went egypt in my first culture game with out understanding tourism. It turned into a diplo vic with my ideology and religion being the world. Was immortal and wasn't completely boring playing tower defense. I just hate it when you refuse to help some that demands 2k and then denounces you and then allies with that other that is trying to kill you and s you out of being able to produce during a world's fair denying the early culture win.
 
I feel like building that many wonders will kill your tech with the NC delay, especially if you're building units as well for domination. I can see HG, especially for Assyria since they need math anyways, but you can steal ToA later, and I don't like the pyramids at all. As far as mixing trees, why take Liberty if you're only building 4 cities? I can see mixing honor and tradition, or honor and liberty, but mixing Tradition and Liberty will slow down rationalism and or the free aquaducts. I also think you need to take more than one capital by 150. Let's assume the game lasts 300 turns, and someone knocks out one other civ for you. You still would need to kill 5 other civs in 150 turns, that's the time constraint problem I'm talking about. It would be really tough to kill a civ every 30 turns (maybe with bombers?).
 
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