Surviving Deity Attila

woodshadows · Sep 27, 2012

Civ seems to like pitting me against Attila as a neighbour since moving up to Deity. I've tried several different strategies but the only thing that seems to work is to play the Aztecs and as long as there's a good jungle/forest start I can usually hold him off with jaguars. This is all fine and well, except I would like to know any advice/ideas for dealing with him with a larger range of civs. Currently he comes at me with a horde of 3 warriors, 3 battering rams, 3 horse archers (that's just the first wave), at a time so early in the game that I've only had enough production time to produce a monument and a worker.

Schalke 04 · Sep 27, 2012

Settle your city on a hill and build a wall. Your city will be a tough nut to crack. Archers in your city and on strategic spots (for example a hill behind your city) help to soften the enemy up. Rush buy archers if needed, they cost just 200 gold.

Against Attila: always destroy the battering rams first, especially when they are in attacking range. The general rule of thumb is to destroy all melee units (rams count as melee in this regard). Even if the AI has lots of ranged units, it cannot take your city without a melee unit.

Moriarte · Sep 28, 2012

I know it is situational, but settling your cities really close might be advantageous. I noticed that if you change position of your melee frequently, 'taunting' invading army, they will keep dancing between cities looking for a better target. This is where archers come in obviously.

woodshadows · Sep 28, 2012

this was on epic btw.. i had about 4 atlatlists and a warrior killed before taking this screen shot. not attila this time, his close relative genghis. maybe deity is just like that.. depending on the game, if you get rushed like this you will almost certainly be doomed. alternatively, instead of getting the great library and national college (in an attempt to keep up my science) i could perhaps have simply build numerous military units to survive the early game at the expense of the long game.

Browd · Sep 28, 2012

Yikes! Bad day to live in Palenque. Reminds me of the Conan the Barbarian lines: "Conan, what is best in life?" "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women."

I'm not used to Epic timings or strategic view, but let me interpret. At turn 96, you have 6 pop in your capital and another 1 pop city (Tikal) (can't tell if your culture borders extend offscreen to the NE for another city), 31 bpt, 5 atlatlists (4 now dead) and your original warrior? It's tough to survive a rush like this without an upgraded defensive military. Atlatlists are fine for barb camps and early warrior/archer rushes, but are simply no match for chariot archers, horsemen and the like.

I would think you should have had time (or made time) to swing down to pick up construction (one hop past masonry, which you needed anyway to improve the marble and stone) and upgrade to CBs, which can chew up warriors, archers, spearmen and horsemen. If you still had the 4 atlatlists who were killed, and had upgraded them to CBs (you could have upgraded three just with the proceeds from one luxury sale), this rush would be over and you'd be marching on the nearest mongolian city to extract a cash-rich peace deal. With that cash, you could rush-buy whatever buildings you neglected along the way, or perhaps another settler.

It's tough to do any of this without the pop and 6/1 seems just too low at this point in the game (repeat caveats re epic timings and possible off-screen cities). Growth is key to surviving at diety (and thriving at lower levels). Don't know how you played this, but it's tempting to keep a city on production focus to bang out units and buildings. That is dangerous at diety (and not all that helpful in the long run at lower levels).

woodshadows · Oct 1, 2012

Browd said:
Yikes! Bad day to live in Palenque. Reminds me of the Conan the Barbarian lines: "Conan, what is best in life?" "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women."

I'm not used to Epic timings or strategic view, but let me interpret. At turn 96, you have 6 pop in your capital and another 1 pop city (Tikal) (can't tell if your culture borders extend offscreen to the NE for another city), 31 bpt, 5 atlatlists (4 now dead) and your original warrior? It's tough to survive a rush like this without an upgraded defensive military. Atlatlists are fine for barb camps and early warrior/archer rushes, but are simply no match for chariot archers, horsemen and the like.

I would think you should have had time (or made time) to swing down to pick up construction (one hop past masonry, which you needed anyway to improve the marble and stone) and upgrade to CBs, which can chew up warriors, archers, spearmen and horsemen. If you still had the 4 atlatlists who were killed, and had upgraded them to CBs (you could have upgraded three just with the proceeds from one luxury sale), this rush would be over and you'd be marching on the nearest mongolian city to extract a cash-rich peace deal. With that cash, you could rush-buy whatever buildings you neglected along the way, or perhaps another settler.

It's tough to do any of this without the pop and 6/1 seems just too low at this point in the game (repeat caveats re epic timings and possible off-screen cities). Growth is key to surviving at diety (and thriving at lower levels). Don't know how you played this, but it's tempting to keep a city on production focus to bang out units and buildings. That is dangerous at diety (and not all that helpful in the long run at lower levels).

Yeah, turn 96 is probably around turn 68 or so on normal speed. i didnt have another city and i had just built that second city there when i got rushed. im so used to falling behind on science on deity/immortal that it's almost a kneejerk to drive towards great library (if i manage to build it) and then take philosophy and build the national college before putting out my second city. problem with this strategy is that while it will help ensure tech parity it means you dont have the production power or tech availability for a strong defensive military. although honestly.. i'm not even sure if id focused on nothing but growth/units whether it would have been enough, affording all those troops can be a challenge in its own right. perhaps my mistake was that i was put on a map beside a major war monger civ (genghis) and should have built to thwart the anticipated rush, following the old mantra to play the map and not stick to one plan. if i'd started beside someone a little more civilized i probably could have fended off a much smaller wave of units and still managed to get the great library/national college.

also.. i've been playing strategic view for months now, my laptop apparently can't play this game without enormous slowdowns which i got sick of, but now that ive adjusted to strategic view, when i go back to normal view i find it so difficult to see anything, strategic view is just so clear and clean, ill never go back.

Surviving Deity Attila

woodshadows

King

Schalke 04

Knappe

Moriarte

Immortal

woodshadows

King

Attachments

Browd

Dilettante

woodshadows

King

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