Finally winning on Deity

Deity Win. Attached is my article on making the jump in difficulty to Deity. These forums have been great; and I thought I'd add my two cents.

Here are my main points:

1.A good start position is required.
2.Trade wisely, getting communication with all civilizations as soon as possible.
3.Suck it up and swallow your pride (and most of your dignity too) and allow trespassing.
4.You will be out researched…by ages.
5.Certain Civ traits really lose effectiveness on Deity.
6.Forget Wonder building early on.
7.You will be expanded by every civilization early on.
8.Early attacks are extremely risky.
9.Use one of the most glaring AI weaknesses, worker efficiency, to your advantage.

I give my advice and examples with each.

Enjoy and discuss.

Stutz

So when are you getting Conquests?

Are you kidding? I would never leave the apartment if I got Conquests. I think of it as self discipline. I think I'll just try to hold out until Civ 4.

Stutz

outstanding article. ill add one more strategy:

every time a war starts between your rivals rush a couple settlers into the fray to establish cities in the rubble. ive gotten as many as four luxuries apart from the ones in my own core this way. yes they have a way of culture flipping but you cant have it all. regard these cities as temporary and dont spend a lot of money on them.

Very sound advices Stutz but I'd like you to play on C3C rather than just plain vanilla. The Armies have totally changed in C3C, changing completely the gameplay if you're a warmonger, which by force of nature you'll have to be at Deity or above. Buy it !

Your article is interesting and gives a good idea of what works for you - thanks.

I happen to use slightly different approach - depending on the game. My advice to anyone playing deity is that there are no hard and fast rules. It is very important to know the fundamentals of the game but how you utilize them varies tremedously based on the way the game is set up and how you react to it.

Check out this thread on my second ever deity game.

hi, i found your article in the war academy. I want to utter some slight criticism. Although i found nothing that is actually 'wrong' in the plain sense of the word, your article seems to be written by someone who is not completely ready for deity. this could even be some kind of 'psychological' problem, if such a problematization fits the discussion of video game strategies . there still seems to be some 'fear' before the ai.
this is not neccessary. the main power of the ai derives from it's huge building and researching boni. Everything you produce or fund will cost the ai only 80%. how can the human player keep up with that?
the structural answer to this question is, that the human player needs 125% production resources. these production resources lie in the cities. if the ai has ten cities with average corruption and the human player has 13 cities, then unit production and gold funding will start to become equal. if the human player has 14 or more cities the balance will begin to swing to your favour.
This idea in mind, it becomes clear why the early phase is so crucial. expansion is everything. your strategy tips focus on this matter, indeed, and if the human player does everything (or at least: almost everything ) right it is possible to hang on to the tech train even through the middle ages.
the human player needs to keep the focus strictly on the main things: settlers and a bunch of offensive units to attack your nearest neighbor. this means: no defensive units, no temples or libraries, no marketplaces. these things will come later when you got your 125%.
after passing that point, this is my observation, a deity game begins to feel like regent, only with much more units.

what you call "the scotch tape" equals to what i call "the wave". the ai starts off fiercely and the human player must hang on. that's why i like your train metaphor so much. the player has to keep in touch with the wave of development in a deity game and to do so, the player needs to learn how to play "with" thie ai and not "against" it. under this perspective, your sucking and flattering is not a way to subdue yourself to the ai but to extract their boni (e.g. faster research). moonsinger is one of the superior players that repeatedly pointed out this approach.

your article shows that you got everything you need right at your hands.

bluebox said:

Everything you produce or fund will cost the ai only 80%. how can the human player keep up with that?

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Pretty sure that's 60% on deity. 80 is emp. (90, 70 and 40 for mon., demi and sid, respectively, BTW.)

Yeop, Punkbass has done his maths o.k.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3infocenter.shtml#levels

Although the diff levels of C3C are missing in the link you have them in the game's editor.

punkbass2000 said:

Pretty sure that's 60% on deity. 80 is emp. (90, 70 and 40 for mon., demi and sid, respectively, BTW.)

Click to expand...

sure, it's 60% . so, you need 166% production, or 16 cities if the ai has 10. the rest still applies in my pov.

Well, not really. Your average city of the sixteen is not going to be nearly as productive as the AI's average city with ten (Well, maybe not on a huge map.)

I can't tell if I'm getting getting slammed or understood here, but after quite a few games on deity (vanilla CIV3), I've found the 60% disadvantage vs. the AI is obscenely huge; but it can be overcome. It's great to get input from forum veterans here, but if I can win using these rules, then I'm obviously ready to play on deity and so is anyone else who wants win on this difficulty level. You can do it Chieftan players!

There's a good point to be made that the expansions have changed the rules a bit, but for you Mac guys out there, this article specifically applies to you since unfortunately it looks as if the other expansions for Civ 3 aren't going to be ported.

I reiterate, from my article, that trying to pilfer the AI early is extremely difficult early on if you don't have a good ancient UU for two big reasons: by the time you produce an offensive force of any size, each AI has produced an army multiple times what you've got (often more advanced too) AND your success in keeping up with the AI in the long run regarding tech depends on you having a good enough rep to be able to do some smart trading. This becomes much more difficult when all the AI civs see you as an enemy instead of a trading partner. This disadvantage can be greatly reduced if the geography and access to resources/luxuries HAPPENS to fall in your favor, but that is just chance and luck, not a strategy. Bluebox, your attack early strategy can work, but it's more of an all or nothing approach that depends on quite a bit of luck regarding CIV locations and your own location.

Punkbass is right. On deity, your corruption problems will be significantly greater than the AI's; and if you think you can depend on outexpanding the AI in cities by 50% in the expansion phase, you're nuts. The best you can hope for is equaling another AI civ's expansion, but only if you micromanage your settler producers early AND/OR you get really lucky in your geographical placement (again, luck, not a strategy).

Glad to have stimulated debate though. It's always good to get more input.

I agree that the harder it gets everything becomes ''All or nothing''.You have to go for the victory not play for fun and under no circumstance to play for triing something new.When you start an emperor or deity game you have to plan everything from the first year and make sure nothing is unpredictable.I'm currently an emperor player but I hope I'll be good enough for deity soon.(practice,practice,practice)

''Repetitia mater studiorum est.''(Romans)

Fantastic article!

I don't particularly mind the extra production speed or even the more starting units. However I do consider giving the AI's free units when they've only have one city left, as cheating.

Not to mention sometimes comical when, the cities have ea units, in the middle of the continents.

The AI will always have more units than you - but that doesn't mean that they are militarily stronger than you. Your military advisor is somewhat ******ed - his spies can tell you, to a degree, if they are overall bigger, equal or smaller than you - but he neglects to tell you that the AI will garrison forces in all it's cities, and if you bring *all* of your units, you might be able to beat their offensive force. I used to be scared of deity AI's - what I would suggest anyone who is do is start a few deity games and, after you get used to the huge number of warriors wandering your territory and stop freking out by the way it out researches you - build an army of swordsmen and go out attacking. You will find that the AI city you attack will have 3 spears in it, instead of 2 or even 1 at lower levels - but your stack of 6 swords takes it rather easily!

Repeat and look for peace - now you have added 2 cities to your empire, along with the work the AI very nicely did in creating infrastructure for you! And you will start being less scared of war.

I recently played a deity game and part way through the AA, I didn't give into a demand for tribute, cause he was on the other side of the continent. he quickly brought 2 more into the fray, one of which was my neighbor!

I didn't lose a single city to any of them and didn't lose many units - I was never able to go on the offensive, cause I hadn't built up my forces, but it taught me a huge lesson about just how powerful powerful is...