Ok, I'm getting slaughtered on Demi-God.

The biggest problem is the tech gap. I started one game as the Babylonians recently and before I knew it the Romans and Sumerians were already well into the Middle Ages before the AD's.

Usually my strategy is to go down the Monarchy path as -- on the lower levels these go unresearched early -- and trade to catch up elsewhere. I would also withhold techs like Literature in order to give myself a head start at the Great Library but to no avail.

Also, even setting the AI aggression level to one step down, Rome still got po'd and rolled over my butt with a troop of legionaires and ancient cavalry.

Any advice as to what techs to go to early and trading frequency, etc?

It depends on map size and civ traits.
In my current Demigod epic game, huge map,
pangea, 8 civs, I built a lot of scouts( I'm playing an expansionist civ) and got to monarchy
real fast from the goody huts, so now I have a big tech lead.
If playing on a different kind of map, it might be better to go straight for philosophy, get it first, and use the free tech to choose literacy and the Great library, allowing you to keep up in the tech race

I researched to Mil.Tradition instead of going the Education patch, and then I turned off research. To capture the Great Library, and when I took it, I got techs up to Fascism.

Check out:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=67724

for an example of how to beat demi-god. We even built a FP (worthless) and had opponents @ max aggression. No GL capture or anything. It was pretty straight-forward.

Arathorn

To be honest, the GPT bug has turned Civ into a wargame at the higher levels.

Basically what hapens is that Civ 1 trades a tech to Civ 2 for 5 gold per turn. Due to the bug Civ 1 actually gets 10 gold per turn, which is then traded for another tech from Civ 3. Civ 3 is now receiving 20 gold per turn. And so on.

This escalation allows many civs to research at 100%, usually with a huge gold surplus. Since the human player is at a disadvantage at the higher levels, they are usually left out of the trading loop. Hence the huge tech defecits.

The result is that the only way to have a chance to catch up is to beat down the other civs so that they are small enough to be uncompetitive. While doing that, the human player will also amass a huge amount of gold from destroying/capturing cities, if the civ in question is one of those that has benefitted enormously from the GPT bug.

Thanks for feedback. I find what Stever says is pretty accurate. It also helps to have a lot of trading partners.

I tried another game on Demi-God as Byzantium and went with ceremonial burial first (for the temples) then shifted to writing and by sheer luck got an SGL. Then went to Philosphy, got Literacy and rushed the Great Library. Then I was pretty much free to sit back with the tax rate at 100% to save for the post-Education phase.

How did you get techs up to fascism with the great library? Wouldn't you have had to get education first, which would switch the GL off?

-mS

Originally posted by Master Shake
How did you get techs up to fascism with the great library? Wouldn't you have had to get education first, which would switch the GL off?

Click to expand...

Nope, it doesn't work that way. You will get any techs 2 other civs have when you take it.

I don't know if it should work like that, but that's the way it work.