What are the strongest civs for deity?

tommynt said:

Its not like the best civ for deity are different ones as the ones for other difficulties.

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i'd say that's incorrect, a lot changes on deity. for one thing the trading civs, netherlands, russia, arabia get a huge bonus on deity as the ai has nearly infinite gold to always pay top price for your extra resources. on deity science is generally much more important since this tends to be the area the ai can really get ahead of the human, while the human can still always out-tactic an ai even with superior numbers on their side. religion seems to play far less of a role on deity as well, i have given up altogether with religion in my deity games, i get my pantheon then i sell my shrine and wait for the ai to give me their religion, competing religiously with the ai is far too difficult, distracting and probably not ultimately worth it as im only losing out on choice of follower and pantheon and founder, let the ai build temples and shrines, i'd rather build workships and universities.

bhavv said:

No I didnt mention that, though I wasnt aware of it. The issue with terrace farms is the mountain bonus - for every mountain in your BFC, theres one less tile that can be worked. Floating Gardens outclass Terrace Farms for OCC.

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But having a mountain next to a city is a huge bonus because of +50% observatory and ease of defense against AI aggression

tommynt said:

Babylon is quite clearly the best civ, maybe even more on deity as it gives such a huge early tech boost which also let u compete for classic/medi wonders on deity. Got a turn 194 science win latly - doubt i can do this with another civ

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Definitely agree (never got below 220 though)

woodshadows said:

religion seems to play far less of a role on deity

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For sure... it's mostly a race to extract as much money & science (via RA's) from the AI as possible

bc1 said:

But having a mountain next to a city is a huge bonus because of +50% observatory and ease of defense against AI aggression

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floating gardens also comes with aztec jungle bias for some amazing science tiles once you get universities. i'd say aztecs are really the better science civ than incas, but incas will have better production/gold

And I second the defense. AI will have fewer borders with you with mountains. And the hills will allow you to have a free great wall early on - easy defense with a bit of tactics

Babylon is very good for Deity - Even though their UA apparently is pretty bad.

Arabia, UU sort of function like artillery as in they can hit cities/units without being hit back. AI can't deal with them, you can use them effectively until you get bombers.. if you keep them alive and get in the upgrades.

Reaching bombers around the same time as AI shouldn't be an issue, you can easily conqueror half the world before this point, because your UUs are just that awesome. Just keep building those UUs, don't stop until you run out of horses, if you get more horses, build more - it's almost always the better option unless you're already able to steamroll through 2-3 fronts.

The double on luxuries from the bazaar will give you a lot of money, which the deity AI has a near unlimited supply of. You can also just buy these bazaars and get the money back by trading the luxuries, which will help with the upkeep of your army.

My guess is that mongolia can do exactly the same, I've just never played them in G&K yet.

bc1 said:

But having a mountain next to a city is a huge bonus because of +50% observatory and ease of defense against AI aggression

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A single mountain to settle next to for an observity is always good, but any more than that are just wasted tiles. For OCC purposes which was initially mentioned, the chance of getting a river and mountainside start is very slim. Ragarding the food bonus from terrace farms, both Aztecs and Siam easilly beat it, and they can work more production tiles earlier with their food bonuses.

Not at all bhavv

You forget about early momentum - having a mountain range and say not settling on it but having the hills next to it means each terrace farm produces +3 food, +2 production at the very start. That production is huge and will mean you build buildings/units faster. You don't have to settle next to a mountain range directly if you are going OCC... The Inca UA will allow you to move your settler through the hills with no problem. And in an OCC on deity you don't really need all of your tiles if you manage specialists well.

But its an early improvement and can get +6 food +2 hammers early in the game [Later on add farm bonuses] giving you huge momentum. Even a lone mountain produces +2 food +2 production early on for you - an equivalent of a sheep and will enhance with the farm techs. Jungles are +2 food without science until universities. So there is a significant difference there.
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Also another thing - Inca can also have a desert start bias. Meaning its entirely possible to have several desert hills and go Petra for even more food.

Its about early momentum often times. And Babylon and the Inca are the best for early momentum in my opinion for OCC

Asia in huge map size with raging barbs is a beast. All the money that comes from barb camps will help Asia a lot in any level including deity.

Its not an early momentum, you need to research to construction I think to get terrace farms unlocked. Floating Gardens come with Wheel, and Siams bonus as soon as you can start pumping money into maritime city states. Both of those come earlier than terrace farms too. Mountain ranges surrounded by hills are simply not a very reliable find for a OCC.

Nothing beats a floating garden for early momentum in a OCC.

woodshadows said:

i'd say that's incorrect, a lot changes on deity. for one thing the trading civs, netherlands, russia, arabia get a huge bonus on deity as the ai has nearly infinite gold to always pay top price for your extra resources. on deity science is generally much more important since this tends to be the area the ai can really get ahead of the human, while the human can still always out-tactic an ai even with superior numbers on their side. religion seems to play far less of a role on deity as well, i have given up altogether with religion in my deity games, i get my pantheon then i sell my shrine and wait for the ai to give me their religion, competing religiously with the ai is far too difficult, distracting and probably not ultimately worth it as im only losing out on choice of follower and pantheon and founder, let the ai build temples and shrines, i'd rather build workships and universities.

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Egypt is a good example in the opposite. An awesome civ in the lower difficulties because you can pump out all those stellar wonders but gets progressively worse as you move up in difficulty and the AI is likely to be half done with the wonder by the time you have even researched the required tech.

Yea that's a good point, Egypt very quickly becomes worse as you increase in difficulty levels, while any civ that can abuse the AIs gold income becomes more powerful. At the start of the game +20% production means nothing and Egypts UA rarely helps you grab wonders on Immortal+.

Also any civ with food bonuses, Inca included can potentially out produce Rameses if they get enough luxuries to maintain fast growth. After getting a size 20 capital in the BCs, and up to size 50 by 1500 AD with the Aztecs, my opinions shifted very rapidly away from Babylon / Korea / Egypt and other civs for OCCs.

bhavv said:

Its not an early momentum, you need to research to construction I think to get terrace farms unlocked. Floating Gardens come with Wheel, and Siams bonus as soon as you can start pumping money into maritime city states. Both of those come earlier than terrace farms too. Mountain ranges surrounded by hills are simply not a very reliable find for a OCC.

Nothing beats a floating garden for early momentum in a OCC.

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loads of mountain ranges is fine early game when you aren't working many tiles, but later in the game it can really stifle you. i think aztecs and inca both have good early momentum for reasons of the floating gardens and terrace farms, but i think by the time education/guilds come around aztecs begin to really outpace incas, being able to trading post all those jungles which have hitherto lain useless there, while the incas can't do anything to improve the mountain ranges that dominate their city's hex radius, which can really cause a decrease in population growth/science/gold/production.

bhavv said:

Yea that's a good point, Egypt very quickly becomes worse as you increase in difficulty levels, while any civ that can abuse the AIs gold income becomes more powerful. At the start of the game +20% production means nothing and Egypts UA rarely helps you grab wonders on Immortal+.

Also any civ with food bonuses, Inca included can potentially out produce Rameses if they get enough luxuries to maintain fast growth. After getting a size 20 capital in the BCs, and up to size 50 by 1500 AD with the Aztecs, my opinions shifted very rapidly away from Babylon / Korea / Egypt and other civs for OCCs.

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yeah, hiawatha, carthage, russia, incas are all very effective at grabbing wonders on immortal/deity. ive had good success with ramses as well however, but its more limited since the production power is *only* for wonders, while the others can be diverted to _anything_. i never have much trouble though getting wonders on deity, unless ramses is in the game, the ai doesnt seem to care as much for building all of them, they seem to target certain ones like great wall, temple of artemis and statue of zeus (of the early ones) and then ones like the pyramids, mausoleum of halicarnassus, stonehenge, terracotta army can sit around being unbuilt late into the AD's. i almost always can get any wonder i want though, if i want the great library and beeline writing, assuming i dont have a completely bad city start, ill almost always get it. not sure what people are doing that they struggle to get a wonder they want on deity. you can't be as casual about it for the high-value wonders like great wall, great library, hanging gardens, you can't just be teching sporadically and then casually decide to build the great library, but if you beeline the appropriate tech and make sure you have some tiles improved and assuming a non-horrible starting location you can totally grab these wonders in at least 75% of cases, higher if you play one of the production civs listed above or egypt.

Babylon is very good for Deity - Even though their UA apparently is pretty poor.

woodshadows said:

i almost always can get any wonder i want though, if i want the great library and beeline writing, assuming i dont have a completely bad city start, ill almost always get it. not sure what people are doing that they struggle to get a wonder they want on deity. you can't be as casual about it for the high-value wonders like great wall, great library, hanging gardens, you can't just be teching sporadically and then casually decide to build the great library, but if you beeline the appropriate tech and make sure you have some tiles improved and assuming a non-horrible starting location you can totally grab these wonders in at least 75% of cases, higher if you play one of the production civs listed above or egypt.

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This is my experience as well. It almost feels like, per given map, certain wonder sets will be available to the human player depending on the starting terrain, AI opponents and their starting locations. It’s almost as if you have to build those wonders or your game will be suboptimal. An Oracle that goes in 600AD is an Oracle that rightly belonged to you.

Another thing is, if you manage to orchestrate the demise of an AI, things go off track. The others will stop their wonder production, leaving the field open for you.

woodshadows said:

inca are very strong, you will have a lot of gold, production, growth and a military advantage which can be very powerful, can't really go wrong with them.
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i'd say that's incorrect, a lot changes on deity. for one thing the trading civs, netherlands, russia, arabia get a huge bonus on deity as the ai has nearly infinite gold to always pay top price for your extra resources. on deity science is generally much more important since this tends to be the area the ai can really get ahead of the human, while the human can still always out-tactic an ai even with superior numbers on their side. religion seems to play far less of a role on deity as well, i have given up altogether with religion in my deity games, i get my pantheon then i sell my shrine and wait for the ai to give me their religion, competing religiously with the ai is far too difficult, distracting and probably not ultimately worth it as im only losing out on choice of follower and pantheon and founder, let the ai build temples and shrines, i'd rather build workshops and universities.

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Woodshadows, I'm finding this to be true. Still searching for my first Deity pangaea victory. I'm currently playing as the Inca, and it's going well (translation: the AI are not mopping the floor with me). My biggest concern is trying to catch up on science, and I have the national college up prior to turn 100 with 3 cities built. I haven't given up on religion at Deity yet- I built city #2 next to Mt Kailash, and used that to be the second civ to found a religion.

Pook said:

Woodshadows, I'm finding this to be true. Still searching for my first Deity pangaea victory. I'm currently playing as the Inca, and it's going well (translation: the AI are not mopping the floor with me). My biggest concern is trying to catch up on science, and I have the national college up prior to turn 100 with 3 cities built. I haven't given up on religion at Deity yet- I built city #2 next to Mt Kailash, and used that to be the second civ to found a religion.

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science was the area i struggled with most when i first moved up to deity, these days i seem to manage to stay at or near the top. i think the only thing i can think that i've done differently is to focus on food/city growth. i also try to make sure i have lots of specialist buildings and trading posts so that i can take advantage of the policies in the rationalism tree. i don't do many research agreements, but i will if i have an excess of gold, i just find the tech boost so minor as to hardly be worth it, not to mention half the time the ai declares on me ruining the agreement and i also dont like the idea that im feeding the ai science as well. city placement choices have also changed for me, i religiously build beside rivers, preferably beside mountains, watermills are great for getting larger cities and rivers have lots of gold/defensive bonuses and mountains of course provide observatories which can be huge. incas are a great civ for deity, those terrace farm tiles can be so powerful early in the game and the incas end up with so much gold, production, food and then to top it off a great war bonus.

Pook said:

Woodshadows, I'm finding this to be true. Still searching for my first Deity pangaea victory. I'm currently playing as the Inca, and it's going well (translation: the AI are not mopping the floor with me). My biggest concern is trying to catch up on science, and I have the national college up prior to turn 100 with 3 cities built. I haven't given up on religion at Deity yet- I built city #2 next to Mt Kailash, and used that to be the second civ to found a religion.

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Maybe you could get off to a faster start, science wise? turn 100 for the NC with 3 cities seems a little slow. I can often liberty-rex and get 6 cities plus NC by turn 80. It might come down to how you go about settlers and workers at the beginning and early build order in the cities.

Usually on deity, especially if rexing, it's crazy to not pick up archery and throw an archer into most cities first couple of builds...but if you're playing Inca you can often find yourself in a nice hilly, closed off area and so can get away with investing less in early D.

With only 3 cities, I'd be looking for NC around turn 70

Ummm, yes. Precisely.

Snarzberry, I have learned a tremendous amount by reading your posts. I aspire to one day be up to the level of ability you are now. My inability to execute at that level is part of the reason I haven't won Deity pangaea yet. In my defense, city #4 went up on turn 105, I play with raging barbarians which slows development somewhat, and in this game I did found religion #2, but I still need to do better if I hope to win at these games. Keep your posts coming and I'll keep learning.