Winning on Diety

Playing Gods and Kings, all DLC's

I can win immortal no problem at all, in fact, it's getting boring.

But, I am not able to win on Deity, and I mean really win, no cheap rush 1 AI or archipelago.

How I usually play on immortal:
Survive early assault.
Usually I head for education fast, and that's when I start to get a tech lead.
Go start concurring at about cross's, maybe on Compounds if I have a good amount and a city that looks easy to take.
Trade post all puppets. Then I have tons of cash I spend on CS's. Alternate wars peace for trade depending on happiness.

Of course I sell to the AI as much as possible all the time.

I usually go down Tradition, and then usually Patronage, although I have been favouring commerce more and more lately.

By the time I have all the CS's I am able to chose my victory condition, usually science or diplo.

Also, this might be relevant, I NEVER make RA's.

Obviously I could say a lot more, and this strategy varies depending on the situation. But that is a general idea.

What I am looking for is tips on winning deity, the AI always out techs, has more money, and their armies are so big I am at artillery before I can even take out one civ (or even city most of the time), let alone the biggest ones. Plus I can't keep any CS's because they have so much money.

I play continents, standard most of the time.

Basically, any and all tips are welcome, I am not picky about Civ or SP's or anything.

EDIT: Also, I play teams of 2 with a friend on Deity all the time, and we always win. So much so, that has started to get too easy.

THANKS!
Jeff

Think I posted in the wrong thread, forum, but I don't see where to move it... Sorry
Moderator Action: -> Moved to G&K.

Just curious, winning Immortal anytime, what about issue of cheating. I found those extremely hard, but I play perhaps "TOO fairly", if one can say that, which means that I don't reload any battle, not even any false move, nothing. Most cheat in some way, it's large scale how much one cheats. You?

I would be very very surprised if you had my play-style and you find Immortal-level very easy, that was my point.

havuoksa said:

Just curious, winning Immortal anytime, what about issue of cheating. I found those extremely hard, but I play perhaps "TOO fairly", if one can say that, which means that I don't reload any battle, not even any false move, nothing. Most cheat in some way, it's large scale how much one cheats. You?

I would be very very surprised if you had my play-style and you find Immortal-level very easy, that was my point.

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I agree with this, someone who is reloading will be able to get the best outcome consistently in situations which could make or break an entire game, I think even top tier players will find Immortal to be challenging given the wide variability that can come into play. If you load up a game and get stuck in some tundra wasteland and have a couple of warmongers close by your game likely isn't going to be 'easy', it may be winnable but it will require you pulling out all the stops and being very creative.

On the topic of fairness, there is also the question of how much you 'steal' from the AI, by abusing the game mechanics to your benefit. If you do this Immortal can suddenly become easier than King or lower because the AI on immortal has a load of gold which they won't have on lower difficulties. By 'stealing gold', I mean playing a large map with many civs on the other side of the continent whom you sell gpt/lux/strategic resources for as much gold as you can before DoW the same turn, every 10 turns, with several civs, effectively getting thousands in gold while not having to give a penny for it in return and not suffering any real backlash other than some minor diplo penalties.

As I posted in a similar thread today at the GK board, check out SBFMadDjinn's deity walkthroughs on YouTube.

Hey guys

Well, I I certainly don't steal to anywhere near the level you are talking about woodshadows. If I see the AI is giving me 208, then I sell to that AI because I "know" they will declare on me soon, but I am not sure that is really stealing anyway, since they DoW.

Other than that, I will sell a resource if I am fairly sure it will get pillaged, perhaps that's unfair, but sometimes they don't and I end up unhappy for no reason...

As for reloads, I used to be fairly bad for that, but I have basically stopped that a while back. I may reload a false move once in a while, but that's about it.

Obviously, not all my immortal games are easy, as you say Tundra with Japan, and Attila beside me is a bit harder But most of the time I find them very winnable.

Thanks so much for the tips about the video's, will check them out now!

you need to focus what win you want to make,every win need to be perfectly planned on diety,if you choose something you need to follow it no matter what,if you interupt you are lossing turn,time,the ai's are gone

Focus should be on your units, 2-3 archers and 2-3 warriors and everyone get promotions as they go. Don't lose these units, rather send new meatshields to take the heat.

Highly promoted early units makes a difference later, when you upgrade them. Crossbows should stay crossbows, until you have stronger material. The xp crossbows give you is amazing, just remember to keep them safe.

The other side is offensive units, you can still do fairly well, but as the AI is opportunistic, they will throw 3-4-5 units against your strong LS, just to make you mad. But with all units in a good position, the AI falls pretty easy even on Deity.

i think the relevant part is you not making RAs, particularly when you say you usually win with diplo or science. the AI on deity will usually win around turn 250 or 260 on science so if you cant start building parts by 230 or 240 then you will have a hard time. signing those RAs are necessary to catch up and have a chance. since you make so much gold you should try to keep at least 2-3 friendly AIs for signing those, even if you have to sweeten the deal if they behind in eras.

i dont know of a way to get a sci/diplo vic on deity without RAs but maybe one of the pros knows how. in their Let's Plays they all seem to have to do it.

Yeah, I started watching the LP videos now and you are absolutely right, it's interesting, because on immortal if you get the uni's up fast enough you gain a tech lead pretty fast, especially since I favour large cities.

Also think I need to focus on getting NC faster than I have been, and finally be a bit less aggressive with my founds, I usually try to land grab the lux's early, which po's the AI's and gets me into perma wars.

Thanks for all the good tips everyone!
Let's see how the next one goes!

Winning every time on Immortal without RAs? Interesting. But on Deity, i m afraid it is a no go. You have to sign them to *barely* keep up in tech with AI. Rush buying few scientific buildings also helps. NC before turn 80 - 85 is a must. (if you decide to have 4 cities) Also, you mentioned detouring to patronage/commerce. Try to time your culture so that you enter straight into Rationalism after tradition. That isn't too hard if you don't build amphitheaters too early and gives you quite a boost. Also, going for workshops before Education is optimal, even though it seems the opposite. Building 6-7-8 units before turn 70 can be highly profitable too. Since they can defend you/wander around doing quests (be careful about cultural quests though). All in all, Deity needs a most serious mind most of the time, micromanaging to the limit, and knowing what makes AI angry and what does not. And even then, after having a top notch strategy that allows you to launch into space in 230 turns consistently, someone jumps out of the fog on you and its over. Good fun.

Easy solution for me: war. War, war, war, war, war. Classical wars, medieval wars, renaissance wars, whatever. Practice good military tactics and you can beat an AI armed with superior unit quantity and quality (which is just about always on deity). If you can stay in the middle of pack with regards to technology, you should be able to win.

Oh, and the range promotion. Get that on 3-4 siege units and you've got the game.

I find this interesting. I always play on Deity and it is impressing so well balanced the game is - you have to be very accurate the whole way to have a chance. After having won some victories as China I now play as America. It is fun to learn the special abilities each nation has. Well, back to the thread!
Last time I managed to be number 1 in land size around T250 (conquered China and Greece) but when I researched Manhattan Project my 2 neighbors had mobile artillery and a bunch of aircraft! I should have focused more on research.
Basic questions are:
1) What is the optimum number of self built Cities (I take it for granted that all conquered cities should be puppet city). I guess it will be around 4, but it depends a lot of the land around the cities. I normally change all irrigation to trading posts on these puppet cities.
2) NC before T80-85 sounds like a decent plan. What about getting into Rationalism, or should City States be the focus through Patronage?
There is no doubt that good military practice is important, but there is a point where the technology has to follow the opponent. The first wave of attack from a foe is important to absorb typically with use of archers. I tend to move slowly forwards after this attack because often there can come a new wave out of nothing. After that 2nd wave it is time to be more aggressive. There is a time where the first round of warfare can give very beneficial peace terms - I have not experienced this to be the case for the next opponents.
I think Maddjinns LPs are great and very inspiring - but are there not other LPs showing Deity game play styles?

Just curious, when do you diety guys get your second city? Is it before or after the NC? I have been trying some Immortal games and sometimes I get caught up in a bunch of other stuff, and writing gets delayed by quite a bit. Then I have to build a library in my second city, and it all just adds up to getting the NC at around turn 120.

Does writing get some priority in your tech path? Because I tend to get it 4th or 5th after all of my resource-unlocking techs. Sorry for so many questions.

OmniPotent42 said:

Just curious, when do you diety guys get your second city? Is it before or after the NC? I have been trying some Immortal games and sometimes I get caught up in a bunch of other stuff, and writing gets delayed by quite a bit. Then I have to build a library in my second city, and it all just adds up to getting the NC at around turn 120.

Does writing get some priority in your tech path? Because I tend to get it 4th or 5th after all of my resource-unlocking techs. Sorry for so many questions.

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I usually get the 2nd city settled @ ~T35-40 & 3rd right after that or @ T60 if there's a war going on or the land is crappy.
Building NC starts @ T70-85 depending on whether I've 3 or 4 cities and if I have money to buy library on the last city or not. So far I haven't build NC once after just once city & very rarely after 2 cities. NC is ready @ 80-95, occasionally before T80.
The more I play the later I'll research writing but that may have something to do with recent warmongering playstyle. Usually my cap is pop 5 or 6 before library.

G

havuoksa said:

Just curious, winning Immortal anytime, what about issue of cheating. I found those extremely hard, but I play perhaps "TOO fairly", if one can say that, which means that I don't reload any battle, not even any false move, nothing. Most cheat in some way, it's large scale how much one cheats. You?

I would be very very surprised if you had my play-style and you find Immortal-level very easy, that was my point.

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I'd agree - I play in basically the same way. Unless I'm very close to the end and victory's achievable, when I will occasionally reload rather than go through all the effort again in a new game straight away (losing a UN vote on the first attempt by 1 vote is the only time I can actually remember doing that), or unless the game crashes (which has happened a few times recently), I never reload. I also don't do gold-for-lux trades very often - I try to avoid doing it at all, and as a result rarely find a need to, but will occasionally do so to get a quick garrison to defend a rush, I won't use it to gain a major game advantage like buying an early settler or an RA. I also avoid playing domination games because the AI isn't good enough at warfare, at least defensively, to make it challenging.

The result is that I can have challenging games on both Immortal and Emperor, and what's more I've learned a lot of the tricks to playing diplomacy, espionage and other game elements that seem misunderstood to the point of frustration among many here, in a way that aids my strategy and makes for more peaceful games (unless I want to go to war).

I just tested it out:
Playing America on Deity. Greece very close neighbor (declared war in T22)!
Built 4 Cities. 3xLiberty (settler+worker)->Honor
2nd city: T21
3rd city: T37
NC: T89
In T91 I had 24% research, and the best had 32% and average was 29%.
The challenge is to built 4xcities, keep Greece away and built up to NC. I will try next time to built a little less units and focus on getting a few research agreements.

STMO said:

I just tested it out:
Playing America on Deity. Greece very close neighbor (declared war in T22)!
Built 4 Cities. 3xLiberty (settler+worker)->Honor
2nd city: T21
3rd city: T37
NC: T89
In T91 I had 24% research, and the best had 32% and average was 29%.
The challenge is to built 4xcities, keep Greece away and built up to NC. I will try next time to built a little less units and focus on getting a few research agreements.

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You could try just teching straight to Education and then using the science boost you get from universities to quickly race through the cheap techs you missed. If you're concerned about keeping up with the demographics primarily that will help you catch up.

PhilBowles said:

You could try just teching straight to Education and then using the science boost you get from universities to quickly race through the cheap techs you missed. If you're concerned about keeping up with the demographics primarily that will help you catch up.

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Yeah...the early game gives you lots of these nice options...but getting through quickly to the NC and universities allows a lot of quick backfilling.

It seems in most of my games...there are exceptions...I'm not in a rush for Sailing and often don't bother with it until I can pick it up in two or three turns..sometimes even one turn...and sometimes Optics in a couple of turns...

And there are other variations on this theme with some of the early techs. But I always fully complete the first tier of techs in an orderly way from top to bottom... I'll have to try something a bit different sometime.

Also in a couple of recent games I managed to get the Hanging Gardens...I was starting to think maybe they had introduced a patch or something....and then last night it was back to the typical scenario...I lost the HG by, I think it was, one or two turns...

Koiranputki said:

Yeah...the early game gives you lots of these nice options...but getting through quickly to the NC and universities allows a lot of quick backfilling.

It seems in most of my games...there are exceptions...I'm not in a rush for Sailing and often don't bother with it until I can pick it up in two or three turns..sometimes even one turn...and sometimes Optics in a couple of turns...

And there are other variations on this theme with some of the early techs. But I always fully complete the first tier of techs in an orderly way from top to bottom... I'll have to try something a bit different sometime.

Also in a couple of recent games I managed to get the Hanging Gardens...I was starting to think maybe they had introduced a patch or something....and then last night it was back to the typical scenario...I lost the HG by, I think it was, one or two turns...

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I've now tried several approaches on Deity and can't improve my tech position at all. And never have any shot at HG (best I've got is Terracotta Army, and a narrow miss on Notre Dame). I was worried about early rushes, but haven't had that in any Deity game yet - I just go through the game without any prospect of winning. Which can still be fun with entertaining neighbours (current game I'm in the odd opposite-land of having Montezuma as a reliable friend and, though he suspiciously refuses to sign DoFs, runaway Hiawatha - an oddity in itself - as my closest neighbour with only positive modifiers and no coveting my lands. Plus I got to cause some mayhem by bribing Monty to attack Ramkhamhaeng and Catherine to attack Darius, which stopped the latter coveting my lands).

I went for Writing late this time as my capital was purely in forest and I went Mining to get rid of it and use the production boost to speed early building construction. I'm also England, which should give me an espionage advantage - however I used one of my first two spies to stay in Jakarta, which was just too close and threatening in case an enemy allied it (Siam did a couple of turns before I was scheduled to declare war on them on Hiawatha's behalf - a quick coup saw to that possible threat). So far all my shuffled Deity maps have been islands/continents, so I've needed to go for Sailing-Optics fairly quickly too.

And all this is despite lucking out early with El Dorado as my nearest Natural Wonder. Although rush-buying a Settler that early then screwed my happiness for much of the rest of the game, as I have very few luxuries on my continent, and my cities grew rapidly. Hiawatha literally ICSing next door has left me with no room to expand, and I'm on a continents map where every one of the eight civs has a continent to itself (except Hiawatha who expanded onto mine, since the lack of obtainable luxuries halted my own expansion on four cities).