I watch all these LP's on Youtube and.....

They never seem to encounter the same resistance as I do when I play on deity. They can easily steal workers and only have to worry about city bombardment whereas there's 1-2 warriors plus maybe an archer there when I play.

Also when I go to take cities there always seems to be loads and loads of units, but when I watch them on youtube they may have 3-4 units around at most.

I don't know the details in regards to when certain patches come out so maybe it's harder now but even recent LP's it's the same.

I've won on deity before 3-4 times with science victories but i'm trying to practice my domination skills and seem to encounter difficulties.

Couple of questions if possible :

1. What is the best civ(s) for straight up early war-mongering?

2. Is honor the best social policy pick? It seems to be but I may be going wrong.

Thanks in advance if anyone takes time out to reply and help out.

LewisH said:

Couple of questions if possible :

1. What is the best civ(s) for straight up early war-mongering?

2. Is honor the best social policy pick? It seems to be but I may be going wrong.

Click to expand...

To answer each question in turn (as best I can)

1. In my opinion, the best civs for deity domination are:
Mongolia, China, Zulu, England, Huns and Arabia.

Obviously there are plenty of other good ones, but these are the ones with game-changingly strong units that will really help you out.

Personally, I find very early war really challenging. I much prefer to get some infrastructure up and then war in the medieval with crossbows. As such I love China and England, as well as Mongolia and Arabia, which basically have more mobile crossbows!

2. Honor is great, I personally love it, but it requires a different mentality and play-style to work. The most forgiving choice (i.e. the hardest to mess up) is still Tradition. Tradition gives you the opportunity to build up your empire and time the war to when suits you. This is very hard to do with Honor, and if you don't do enough conquering in the medieval after picking Honor you can fall very badly behind.

As for why the LPs seem to have an easier time. I'd say it's a combination of the following:
1. Many LPers don't upload the games they lose or do badly
2. They play with such relaxation and ease that the difficulty seems lower than it is
3. (this is the most important one) they are skilled at bribing the AIs to war and timing their attacks to hit the AI when they are weakest.

The other thing I would say is, don't panic! The AI often sends a carpet of units and then does something stupid like embark them. I saw a recent LP where the Zulus bombed the player's capital to 0 health, but then didn't send any units to capture it! So the carpets themselves are not a problem as the AI is so dumb.

If you do decide to go with the Honor tree, then that carpet of units turns into free gold!

I have a hard time with deity domination as well. So far I've only won this way with all other VCs disabled. My go to is the Zulu. If you can keep some impi alive to the March (heal every turn) promotion, then you are golden because they upgrade to rifles and then infantry.

Honor is tough. You need to keep fighting because all of your bonuses (culture, gold) are tied to defeating other units. If you aren't fighting, you basically don't have any policies helping your civ.

As to the LPs, I think the captain had a good take. Nobody uploads videos of them getting their face smashed in by Venice on turn 45 after they missed out on two wonders and forgot to build a granary. . I'd watch it, but no one else would. I used guidance from LPs to finally beat deity and I noticed that one of the issues is that they are frequently setting up a situation for 75 or 100 turns down the road. LP commentary can be a bit sparse, so they frequently make things look easy when the payoff finally comes, when in actuality it was predicated on decisions made many turns ago. For instance, the enemy seems to only have a few units defending a city in an LP, but your experience is that they are much more heavily guarded. However, the LP player may have bribed that civ to go to war fifty turns ago in order to thin out those troops, or at least get them to the other side of the map. Many LPs won't include in their commentary that this is what they are doing.

Primacide said:

Honor is tough. You need to keep fighting because all of your bonuses (culture, gold) are tied to defeating other units. If you aren't fighting, you basically don't have any policies helping your civ.

Click to expand...

I've been playing nothing but Honor for awhile now. Fighting this temptation has been my biggest challenge. By that I mean, you are right. However, don't let this mentality send you into wars you're not prepared for. Taking the time to regroup and tech up will pay off in the end. Though this is the reason why I'd say that Honor isn't a good pick below Immortal: The enemies just won't have enough units to benefit from.

playing honor, a nice LP to watch to see how it's done is the one from Acken with the chinese. A real lesson.

There's another player that did many many honor opening LPs, he is a member here as well but i cant remember his name. His LPs were also very interesting for warmongering wannabees.

cazaderonus said:

playing honor, a nice LP to watch to see how it's done is the one from Acken with the chinese. A real lesson.

There's another player that did many many honor opening LPs, he is a member here as well but i cant remember his name. His LPs were also very interesting for warmongering wannabees.

Click to expand...

I've watched that one. It was very good and a lot in there to learn. Even in that video straight away he sees that Songhai is right next to him so rightly goes and steals a worker to make it harder for them but he doesn't encounter any units. If I find an enemy at around turn 10-ish I stay at their borders and there's a couple of warriors at the very least.

I must be doing something wrong but I can't put my finger on it.

One trick I find useful: Its often easier to steal from AI´s 2nd city. They tend to keep units around cap at first.

Doesn't always work, but sometimes. In addition, its much easier to steal with scout from 2nd city (especially if on flatland).

edit: at some point, they usually go hunting barbs (maybe t25-40) as well. Not as good, but patience usually gives an opportunity in the end.

I agree. I've learned a lot from watching LP videos.

But things do always seem to go well for them.

I know I need to get better at combat but they take cities with ease when I have to always move my units after only one attack or I loose them. It is frustrating how bad I am at taking cites... :-(

On the videos and easy worker steals:
When it's against city states, the ones in which the worker doesn't stray near the human don't make their way onto an LP video.

Similarly, games in which a barb problem occurred because the human's units were elsewhere (such as positioning for a city state worker steal) don't make their way into an LP video either.

Of course you should always be extremely wary of trying to steal workers from Aztecs or Shoshone - in fact I'd say its a suicide run but there might be some occasions it could work.

Redaxe said:

Of course you should always be extremely wary of trying to steal workers from Aztecs or Shoshone - in fact I'd say its a suicide run but there might be some occasions it could work.

Click to expand...

Iroquois too.

LewisH said:

Even in that video straight away he sees that Songhai is right next to him so rightly goes and steals a worker to make it harder for them but he doesn't encounter any units. If I find an enemy at around turn 10-ish I stay at their borders and there's a couple of warriors at the very least. I must be doing something wrong but I can't put my finger on it.

Click to expand...

There are a few possibilities.

• At some point the AI was patched to be better at guarding settlers and workers. So the video might be old.
• Sounds like you may be too close. Usually the AI will not wander an unescorted worker near your warrior. The AI might not be so cautious around your scouts, I am not sure about that.
• Ideally, you want your unit to be just out of sight. If your warrior is on a hill one tile from borders, then your warrior can see two hexes but the city does not have line of sight on you.
• Consider using scouts to steal, since they can move into a hill or forest, take a look around, then either steal or move back out of sight.
• Look for unimproved lux or resource tiles at least two hexes from the city. Three hexes is ideal because you don't have to take a hit from the city.
• There is a lot of luck involved. Most of my settler steals are unplanned opportunities. But if I catch one settler near my cap, odds are good that the AI will send another one there.
• An escorted settler near one of your cities is an easy kill too. Use zone of control to slow them down. The settler cannot plant if he is near one of your cities, and the escort will not attack while the settler is still alive. More than once I have used this to kill an AI spearman with just two scouts and my starting warrior. If you can DOW from the right direction, the AI units will even move into city bombardment range!

Redaxe said:

Of course you should always be extremely wary of trying to steal workers from Aztecs or Shoshone - in fact I'd say its a suicide run but there might be some occasions it could work.

Click to expand...

I tend to treat all the AIs the same in this regard. Most will accept peace pretty quickly, but when I steal a worker, I then am prepared to be a war for 40+ turns.

beetle said:

I tend to treat all the AIs the same in this regard. Most will accept peace pretty quickly, but when I steal a worker, I then am prepared to be a war for 40+ turns.

Click to expand...

I wasn't so much referring to 40+ turns of war more that the Shoshone Pathfinder and the Aztec Jaguar will actually chase down your scout or starting warrior to rescue their worker. Largely because they can cover rough terrain much more quickly so you can't always count on a lucky escape

Redaxe said:

...the Shoshone Pathfinder and the Aztec Jaguar will actually chase down your scout or starting warrior to rescue their worker.

Click to expand...

Oh, good point! Thanks for that bit of clarification.