Is Deity harder on Continents?

Is it just me? Any Deity experts can answer this? It seems like an AI always runs away with the game on Continents for me. I find Deity much easier on Pangaea. Any advice for Continents?

Continents has always been the most difficult map imo regardless of difficulty.

If it is continents and you get your own continent, I think it is the easiest deity setting - if you have a space win formula down well. If you are sharing a continent, I will let others weigh in on that.

Silverfuturist said:

If it is continents and you get your own continent, I think it is the easiest deity setting - if you have a space win formula down well. If you are sharing a continent, I will let others weigh in on that.

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Agree with this. The main problem when you share a continent is that you are often clustered into a tiny corner(i don't know why but you have less land ''per capita'' than pangea maps) and often with open land(i.e. few mountains and natural chokepoints). Then almost every AIs turn guarded when you settle more than 3 cities making every trades more or less tedious and not so much lucrative.

Tabarnak said:

Agree with this. The main problem when you share a continent is that you are often clustered into a tiny corner(i don't know why but you have less land ''per capita'' than pangea maps) and often with open land(i.e. few mountains and natural chokepoints). Then almost every AIs turn guarded when you settle more than 3 cities making every trades more or less tedious and not so much lucrative.

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Right, and I wasn't going for a space victory. I was going for domination. And the problem was, until Navigation, unless I got lucky, I wasn't meeting 4-5 of the other civs, so as soon as I got into a war with my local civs, I had no one to trade with anymore.

But even if I was going for a science victory, with only 2 people to RA with, and virtually zero chance of us all remaining peaceful the whole game, it would be pretty damn hard. It seems to me the best bet is to cap everyone on your continent ASAP and then hope you haven't fallen too far behind...

The problem is, that's exactly what happens to me. The techs I have to go for to dominate my continent slow down my tech so much that I fall miserably behind and then have no one to RA with until Navigation, which is pretty out of the way from where I was teching for my war. If I chose a particular civ whose UUs were early in the tree, it'd be different. Maybe I should just try this with Montezuma or someone else with early UUs that can rush across rough terrain.

Actually, Polynesia might work too, because you could probably meet all the civs way early. And then just go tall. But whatever, basically it feels like continents is not well-balanced for Deity. I don't like beating my head against a wall to prove a point. ;-)

I think I'll just play on Pangaea for my first Deity Domination win. I was trying continents because I figured that I would get a huge advantage from early conquest and could then tech up really fast without outside interference, then conquest the rest of the world, but I don't know if that's realistic on Deity.

Edit: (Not realistic because out-teching the AI on the other continent without RAs and without focusing on science from the first moment doesn't seem to work that well, so by the time you leave your continent to conquest, you're behind in tech unless the capitals you get are treasure troves of wonders maybe)

Also consider playing Maya under these circumstances, and take a great admiral as your first long-count GP after researching Theology (which is likely on your early tech path, whether going domination or science). Since a GA can cross ocean tiles before you've researched astronomy, put him to sea and meet the other continent's civs.

patsfan454 said:

Continents has always been the most difficult map imo regardless of difficulty.

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Continents results in a runaway civ more often than any other map. Greece, France, Rome... if these guys get a continent with weaklings, its game over.

Pangea is way easier. You can meet everyone right of the bat start fostering good relations, and all the free cash from meeting CS. I would mark Pangea at least a half a difficulty level easier.

Agree with all.

Ive never played a pangea game in my life... I always figured youd need continents in order to "make it fair" and actually have astronomy be an important tech to get.

On pangea youd have unlimited trading partners, that much gold would give you a relative advantage over the AI.

As for runaway civs, it really depends. Id say about half of the time there is a runaway... the other half you get two civs of equal power on the other continent with everyone else dead or dying.

Doesnt make a difference to me... who needs a spaceship when you can turn the other continent into an apocalyptic wasteland.

Priah77 said:

who needs a spaceship when you can turn the other continent into an apocalyptic wasteland.

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Cue camera three: Amidst a once lush landscape, now shimmering with fallout, the dazed, pre-cancerous survivors of nuclear fire wander aimlessly in the ruins that had been their glorious city on a hill. They weep and ask, how was our mighty empire brought low by an ill-tempered upstart from across the sea? Did we offend the gods in some way....?

Browd said:

Cue camera three: Amidst a once lush landscape, now shimmering with fallout, the dazed, pre-cancerous survivors of nuclear fire wander aimlessly in the ruins that had been their glorious city on a hill. They weep and ask, how was our mighty empire brought low by an ill-tempered upstart from across the sea? Did we offend the gods in some way....?

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They simply ran into an OCP.

I can give You a rather funny story of how I was playing a 4 player Deity game on continents map. There were 3 continents, I got one with opponent (Vikings), two other players had their separate continents. I conquered the Vikings quickly and was on the way to Tech. Vict. when both of the opponents declared war on me. Defending your own continent only on water is relatively easy and I could go on and on like that till the end game when at some point of the game the AI's started spawning their units on my continent out of nowhere. They simply produced so many units, there was not a single space left on their own continents and the units were spawning on only tiles on the map, that did not belong to anyone (tundras and snow on the bottom of my continent, which were like 3-4 tiles away from my cities). You can imagine how the game ended.

Sidor1982 said:

I can give You a rather funny story of how I was playing a 4 player Deity game on continents map. There were 3 continents, I got one with opponent (Vikings), two other players had their separate continents. I conquered the Vikings quickly and was on the way to Tech. Vict. when both of the opponents declared war on me. Defending your own continent only on water is relatively easy and I could go on and on like that till the end game when at some point of the game the AI's started spawning their units on my continent out of nowhere. They simply produced so many units, there was not a single space left on their own continents and the units were spawning on only tiles on the map, that did not belong to anyone (tundras and snow on the bottom of my continent, which were like 3-4 tiles away from my cities). You can imagine how the game ended.

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A classic example of why 1 unit per tile is completely stupid.

kamex said:

A classic example of why 1 unit per tile is completely stupid.

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More accurately a classic example of poorly designed AI to work with 1upt. It's not the 1upt system that is at fault here but the fact there isn't a switch for the AI to stop building once they get past a certain point.

A simple statement such as
if (land tiles owned <= military land units owned) {
Stop building land units
}

would solve that problem

I dunno, I've had some pretty hairy games from the centre of a pangea. From an edge, yeah pangea is easy, but if you're in the middle and everyone is marching armies in your direction early it can make the start much more difficult than in any contnents game.

Once you survive initially, pangea is easier due to earlier traders/no continent crossing, but as the early period is the most dangerous bit with largest AI dominance, I usually find an easier time with continents.

Sidor1982 said:

I can give You a rather funny story of how I was playing a 4 player Deity game on continents map. There were 3 continents, I got one with opponent (Vikings), two other players had their separate continents. I conquered the Vikings quickly and was on the way to Tech. Vict. when both of the opponents declared war on me. Defending your own continent only on water is relatively easy and I could go on and on like that till the end game when at some point of the game the AI's started spawning their units on my continent out of nowhere. They simply produced so many units, there was not a single space left on their own continents and the units were spawning on only tiles on the map, that did not belong to anyone (tundras and snow on the bottom of my continent, which were like 3-4 tiles away from my cities). You can imagine how the game ended.

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Yeah... the AI doesn't do that anymore last I checked. This days once they've hit a certain limit for their level, they immediately switch production to science or gold. This does not apply if they are at war with a tough foe or three.

I'm the opposite on this - I wish they would actually *spam* more units than they currently do on Emperor and above.

It depends. Mix of civs and land are two things that determine the real difficulty. I often get the classic 4/4 continents, but AI on mine is relatively backward, so I can easily grow as much as I want and gradually swallow all the neighbors. If I manage to conquer my continent early enough, I don't even care what happens on the second one. Runaway or no runaway. On the other hand, if the runaway is on your continent (seems to happen less often), it doesn't leave you enough trading partners till Astronomy. Which can be really harsh. But overall I wouldn't say it's harder than pangaea. Each has its own pros and cons.

Yes diety is harder on continent (sometime unwinnable) than it is on pangea