Who beat Deity difficulty?

Did you beat Deity difficulty? (without cheating and on randomized map?)

I am curious to know if anyone else beat this game on the highest difficulty because i was kinda impressed by my own pwnage.

If you did, please give a short description of what your strategy was..

Before i reveal my own strategy, i first like to hear some of your strategies and i want to tell you how much i love this game.. Eversince i got the game earlier this week i have been totally addicted to Civilization 4. I've been playing it 24/7 and i can't sleep anymore, i wake up at 8:00 clock just thinking about playing Civ4 again while i normally couldn't get out of bed before 14:00.. (yea i got evening school, its nice!) And when i do sleep, i actually dream about aspects of this game (i won't go into details).. Anyway, this game is totally controlling my life atm and i just won the game for the 2nd time and i am looking for other ways to get involved in this awesome game, so i joined this forums to discuss what it takes to be a winner.. I won it twice so far, first one was a time victory and the last one was a conquest victory in the year 1948 and it felt really imba! I will explain my strategy after you guys (i will also upload a save game of the last turn then)..

I am very curious to see how many other people managed to win this game at the highest difficulty, so please share your story!!!

AXE_Civ4,

A lot of people here have beat Deity. It's rough, and while I have beat it, I usually don't play it. It's too much like work to compete on that difficulty. Usually my strategy involves lots of quick wars, and annoyance. I get in, steal their workers, pillage their lands, take or raze a city (depending on my own economy) and then get peace. If I can figure out a way to block the enemy in, I will do it, and to be honest most of my good wins have come from stealing a city to block the enemy on to a peninsula even at the cost of my economy. If that happens I go into full recovery mode. Usually I'll have more than enough Workers (from Worker stealing) to have each city setup with 2x as many improvements as there are citizens, so I make about half of them Cottages, and the other half for production. Then I micromanage the citizens accordingly while keeping my prey injured by repillaging all his or her lands and stealing more Workers.

Many beat it regularly - but not me yet.

Congratulations on your win!

Welcome to the Forums AXE_Civ4.

Thanks Supr49er!

Kesshi, did you use that same strategy to win on Deity difficulty?

If so, do you remember which map settings you used and what victory type you had? What was your building strategy and tech strategy and prefered civics? How did you use the religion aspect? Do you remember any specific things that helped you get victory? (besides stealing workers and blocking in the enemy?)

And this goes for anyone: If you rule, please say why! Go into important details, like the questions i asked above. It's very much appreciated!

I want this topic to be an inspiration to everyone, giving profound new insight about getting even more control over the game. And i don't just want to show off my own strategy so i am curious to see how many other people have an owning strategy..

Please share your winning strategies!

Ummmm... AXE_CIV4 have you already advanced to Deity or are you stuck on another level? IMO, I would think so. No offense but not even Sistuil has progressed to Deity.

I've beaten Deity, but it doesn't really count when it's a Future Era Space Race win.

Most certainly we need proof of existence

Congratulations to you man and welcome to CFC. You can easily find a ton of people who beat deity just by looking at the hall of fame. Myself, I've won a few space races that were good games - I generally play Huge map, epic speed. I'd be the first to say that other game settings can make a much, much greater difference in difficulty anyway. (You can easily have an emperor game that would be harder than some Deity games). One really easy, and common strategy just to say you've gotten that Deity win is this:
1)Pick Rome
2)Pangea (Standard or Small is fine)
3)Praet Rush GG!

I generally don't play on Deity either because it is really hard and often impossible; it's just not always fun. My opinion of various game settings is that larger maps are MUCH harder than smaller maps (and I like to play huge anyway). Marathon speed is easier because units are relatively cheaper, making it so the human can better fight wars. Overcrowding a map (putting in extra AIs above the standard number) makes it easier too because they lose their advantage on expansion. Other less common but still used settings like no tech trading can also weaken the AI. So, winning on Deity doesn't have to be that bad at all if you set it up right, and certainly people here have proved there are tons of strategies to succeed.

One last thing is that I'm currently in the middle of an awesome (fun and exciting) Deity game right now. I'm Pericles of Greece on a Huge, epic, Archipelago map. I'm not sure if I'm going to win this one; it will be really close. However, I think I may post a write-up of it in strategy/tips or maybe stories because it's such a crazy, interesting game.

There's a huge difference between playing Deity and having fun (which I do) and winning consistently (which I don't).

On default settings, a 'fair' chance of winning would be winning 1 in 7 games, which I'm sure many veterans could do after getting used to the pace of the level. If they have the inclination at all (for me, competing at Deity requires opportunism and playing 'close to the mechanics'... no immersion at all there, and sometimes I'm just not in the mood for that).

I heard it's slightly less brutal on slower speeds but cleanup feels like a chore already on Normal Speed.

I don't have a single strategy. Sometimes my game involves harassing and pillaging for fun and profit as Kesshi described. If the map allows it, the Great Lighthouse and claiming every bit of coast and every island possible sets one up for a strong game. If not, I often fund my expansion by selling resources (one advantage: Deities have money!). At others I exploit the gullibility of my war allies - often I can steal cities just before they take them.
A recurring theme is a game-winning Renaissance war, with a monopoly on either Riflemen or Cannons.

Take a look at the Civ 4 Strategy and Tips forum. There are several Deity level games being played out right now, with extensive commentary by players and kibitzers.

I've done a marathon duel quecha rush on diety. Other than that the best level I've won at is monarch

Did you really beat diety in your first week? If so, great job. Many here have been playing for years and some including myself probably will never do it the real way.

To me, saying that "you beat it on Deity" is meaningless. There are so many other settings which play a large part in the difficulty of the game. Did you win a Deity game with One-City Challenge and Raging Barbs with no other Civs on the map? That's not particularly impressive. Did you win a Deity game against one other civilization halfway across a huge map and no barbarians? That's somewhat impressive. But not as impressive as if you were to win against 18 civs on a huge map. And then there's the actual map you played on. Was it Pangaea, Archipelago, or Fractal? How many landmasses? How much ocean? Etc.

But don't mind me. I'm just a rambling fool who hasn't even bothered to complete a full game past Warlord difficulty.

I usually play ancient start, normal size/speed, RandomScriptMap or Shuffle, random climate, sea level, and leader. Lock modified assets, all victories. Number of AIs ranges from 2 below to 2 above default.
Sometimes with Aggressive AI and/or Raging Barbarians, usually not.


I don't want to know much about the map in advance (unless I'm playing a 'special game' to try something unusual) because I consider that to be an unfair advantage. If anyone can suggest a good alternative for a mapscript, I would be grateful.
PlanetGenerator has many good options butthe actual maps seem a little unexciting and lifeless to me. PerfectWorld is gorgeous but too predictable for my tastes (going boldly where no man has gone before is always worth the effort).

I've done it on the World Map (the original World Map from Vanilla Civ4) with BTS 3.13 (Ancient start, Marathon). I played as Rome, and did a lot of refining to my strategy to get it just right. The first couple hundred moves were pretty much scripted.

Edit: I don't think I could ever do it on full random, unless I just restarted new random maps until I got an AMAZING start location.

hi guys. please let me share my story. i am crious of your oppinions.

I ve been playing CIV 4 for a long time now.

I had always thought deity is impossible but after winning it on Immortal i wanted to try.
I have been trying it ever since.

I have come very close to it twice, but one should also note that I m the kind of idealistic fan of the game who is trying not to use "dirty tactics" as mush as it is possible.
so basically i am trying to win it "normally" instead of disrespecting alliances or exploiting tactics that are not cheating but definately taking advanteges of small holes not intended to be there when the designers created the game.

so
I usually play huge map, slowest pace (i think it is epic but i never change it so dunno), global highlands ( i like the strategic factors of hills and mountains) ridglines, dense peaks, low sea level.
I play the Inca, but I have not done qetchua rush in the two games I am about to write about.
I also only use domination and space race victory, no tech brokering.
(i restart the game many times to have a seemingly ideal starting pos)

1st game:
in about 1500 i was controlling everything been ahead on points, and was truly winning the game (i dont say that an allied army of all my opponents would have suddenly attacked i wouldn'T had trouble but I felt i was winning clearly) total see dominance largest, most advanced empire. electricity, combustion etc in 1500AD.

then my game froze, it could not be reloaded. I was upset to say the least.
I gave the save to a friend i was teaching how to play and when he started it, he could easily win it which was strange for me because he had only a few weeks of experience with CIV4.... then it turned out that his version of BTS was higher then mine and his inflation was apr. half as in my version. SAME GAME!!!
So I think it makes a lot of difference even playing CIV4BTS on deity which version you are playing it.

I never changed my version though, i consider lower inflation to be a cheat after i was so close to winning it this way!!

2nd game:
appr 1200 AD
I am ahead in tech advance but russia is pretty strong production wise, but i have a good strategic location using a few city front line to keep them at bay. interesting defesive war, using rivers, hills, forests, fortresses, and appr 5-7 machine guns each important tile (with MANY more auxliary units like riflemen and cannons etc)
then 1 turn russia shows up with a stack of 127 cavalry + additional units. 127 units of cavalry in appr 1200 AD. i turned the game off.

never been able to win it (with my high inflation option) since....
but i have fun keeping on trying it

please share your thoughts I would welcome that

My 1st (and until now only) Deity Win was on Huge, 18, Mara-speed, Archipelago, Diplomatic victory (UNations)... And actually i already was going for Alpha Centauri, but got surprise vote from 1 extra AI, after I hit enter I see "diplomatic victory" message with Space Ship take-off background

I have won couple of times, relatively "fairly". Meaning I used couple of loads to get my SoD back to reject invasion, but not to change battle results etc.

Mainly winning deity means very fast attacking neighbours, to get their cities as they build them much faster than a human player. Once, tho, I had a perfect starting location on lakes map and I managed outtech deity with Romans in long run without warring. I had only 6 core cities and I managed to build some key wonders. That I would call my best builder game till far.

I've won it once, really just a token win to say I've done it. I used Earthlings strategy of Tiny pangea, Rome, 1 opponent, Preat rush ftw. It was slightly more challenging than I expected, I was expecting it to be really simple. But it was still rather easy. I play Immortal atm and can win Small fractals most of the time but struggle with Standard fractals, when I can beat them regularly I will take on Deity properly. Congrats on your win.

Deity difficulty is so difficult that I don't even try it out unless I cleared out the less difficult levels that are also difficult. Once the less difficult levels are cleared by me, I will go ahead and try out to beat deity difficulty. The best I've done in civ 4 bts is passing monarchy difficulty by achieving a domination victory with Cyrus of Persia. I did that in a 6 player pangea.. I couldn't believe it because I tried the same strategy again in the same difficulty and failed. The ais had so much technology in the end that my units were getting massacred en masse.

I beat deity recently as Mansa Musa, random start.

Holy cow, does the AI get a lot of unit production on deity! Actually, I have a question: can the AI somehow produce more than 1 unit/turn in each city on deity? Because I had set up a chokepoint in a war with Joao where I was absolutely shredding his incoming stacks of riflemen and artillery, usually more than 15+ per turn, but his number of units seemed to be actually increasing. He only had about 8 cities, and I had espionage visibility in all of them so that I could see their production and even their garrisons. I want to know what hat deity Joao was pulling his units out of because his units just kept on accumulating. Thankfully, I had 30+ cities by that point, and I was able to build up my forces more quickly as I whittled his down, or at least as I kept his forces at bay, considering that I never was able to whittle his forces down until I started landing with marines and actually capturing cities. Man, was it a tough slog!