What percentage of deity starts is winnable?

I started testing a few early game with fractal and continents maps. I quit every game around turn 80, and tried to assess whether this game would be playable. Out of maybe 7~8 games I had 1 game which seemed playable.

I wonder if this is the impression of experienced deity players too, or maybe my early game is just not good enough.

I had 3 losses as a result of early declaration by a very close and agressive neighbour (ragnar, toku, shaka), and several more games where I was totally blocked by creative/imperialstic AIs. I was also unlucky to have crappy land around my capital while they had the nice green areas.

What is the bare minimum that you are looking for around turn 100 on deity to determine if the game is worth continuing?

Do you have the saves of the starts? It would make it easier to know whether your starts are your poor side or whether you just got unlucky. 1 out of 7-8 sounds a little low.

I don't have any set minimum -- but there should be 'something' to revolve a plan around. What that 'something' is can vary though.

How early were these DoWs? In my experience you can stop some of them as long as you notice they have enough on their hands and you've had time to hook up copper. They usually don't attack with that many units. If they're starting to push you too hard you can settle a city next to their borders and gift it for a peace treaty. Unfortunately Ragnar and Shaka come at you very fast. DoWs before 1500 BC are tough unless you have copper in your capital, but 500-1200 BC ones don't necessarily mean game over.

No, I don't have saves, I just did very quick tests to check. I think I might have been a little unlucky in starting locations with really bad land near the capital, or really bad neighbours (isolated with Toku ).
Nevere though about settling next to their border. Is this something you do after the declaration (meaning you keep a settler ready for such case?), I think I could have one my Ragnar game this way, because I had good land (marble, food, gold) and good (other) neighbours to trade with. I just assumed that getting declared early by a deity is game over.

Gifting a city would come after fending off the initial stack of units (and maybe some stray ones) as the AI would have to be ready for peace talks. The problem is that you won't have alphabet and thus can't offer anything but cities. You don't want to give away one of your matured ones so it's better to settle one right next to his borders where it doesn't cause you much harm. It doesn't take that long to whip out a settler so you don't have to plan it that much in advance. The first thing to do is to stop the initial stack -- then you can start thinking about ways to get peace.

And no, a deity DoW on you doesn't mean game over at all. I like SB/NA a lot on deity level -- you have a great chance of fending off these early DoWs (even without resources) and the philosophical trait to speed up the tech rate even if your empire is pathetic. Financial and such leaders might be more effective if you get a good map roll -- but if you only have 1 game to work with SB is a much safer pick.

If you're going for cultural, maybe it's pretty high.

I still believe winning consistently on (BtS) deity is possible.

We have the strategies worked out, from managing early DoWs to developing strong economy on little land.

The problem is in choosing the right strategy early, without much info about the map and the opponents.

What percentage do the top players win - is there anyone on the forums who can claim to beat Deity consistently?

On medium size/speed unpredictable maps (Shuffle, random climate and sea level), I'm winning maybe 40% of my Deity games and don't seem to be improving. About half of the ones I lose seemed winnable in principle, but many of those involve judgment calls on insufficient information... I don't think I could get higher than 50% just by cleaning up my execution.

Since playing it safe isn't an option - if I took no calculated risks, I'd win less - I think I've hit my ceiling unless I come across anything fundamental I missed before. Also, if it was possible to win consistently on Deity we'd need a higher level - I like 50%-ish odds (still more flattering than playing against equal opponents, but enough of a challenge to make a victory satisfying).

One thing you could try is browsing the Succession Games forum for deity games (such as this one or this one or this one). Then, without reading the thread, start your own shadow game using the initial save. After finishing it, compare your results to that of the SG team to see which aspects of your game could use some improvement (assuming the SG team did well and their game didn't end in an ignominious defeat).

Unconquered Sun said:

I still believe winning consistently on (BtS) deity is possible.

We have the strategies worked out, from managing early DoWs to developing strong economy on little land.

The problem is in choosing the right strategy early, without much info about the map and the opponents.

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Good, that means I still have room for improvement in my early game.

Take this start for example - I totally believe it is winnable, but I have restarted it several times every time I try it I feel I have done really badly.


Rusten, USun: would you mind trying the early game here and give your thought? If you think it's a winnable and interesting game we could post it a deity challenge. If you don't mind, please save every 10 turns or so for the first 50 turns and send me the saves in a PM or email (I don't want to exhaust your post upload quota).

Lekdevil.NL said:

One thing you could try is browsing the Succession Games forum for deity games (such as this one or this one or this one). Then, without reading the thread, start your own shadow game using the initial save. After finishing it, compare your results to that of the SG team to see which aspects of your game could use some improvement (assuming the SG team did well and their game didn't end in an ignominious defeat).

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That's a good suggestion, only that being such a CFC addict I have already read them all (what else am I supposed to do during work days? )

Iranon said:

What percentage do the top players win - is there anyone on the forums who can claim to beat Deity consistently?

On medium size/speed unpredictable maps (Shuffle, random climate and sea level), I'm winning maybe 40% of my Deity games and don't seem to be improving. About half of the ones I lose seemed winnable in principle, but many of those involve judgment calls on insufficient information... I don't think I could get higher than 50% just by cleaning up my execution.

Since playing it safe isn't an option - if I took no calculated risks, I'd win less - I think I've hit my ceiling unless I come across anything fundamental I missed before. Also, if it was possible to win consistently on Deity we'd need a higher level - I like 50%-ish odds (still more flattering than playing against equal opponents, but enough of a challenge to make a victory satisfying).

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Hmm... Well right now I have my sights set a lot higher. I've noticed in simultaneous-turn TEAM games, that the deity AIs are MUCH tuffer in comparison to solo. Now... if I can win 50% of those, then I'd probably be a 99% winner in regular deity. Ahah!

I can't blame my partners either, because I've had some of the best.

Also, I said 99%, because we have to leave room for that 1%. I do remember a time, I started a map with a peaceful leader, and wouldn't you know, Boudicia starts 3 tiles away from my capital!!!! Yes how the f*ck is that possible? Because, there was a water-body between us which has a funny effect on city placements.

Before I could even get a worker, or warrior, or even blink, she's already PISSED (what did I do, hadn't had time to even make a workboat if I wanted!) And in just a few turns it was auto-declare and BOOM, you're dead by amphibious and didn't see it coming.

Well of course you didn't see it coming, she moves her boat(s) out her capital AND can attack yours all in a single turn!

I should have kept the autosave, because that one TRUELY had 0% chance to win.

Are we talking theoretically winnable or real wins?

1% seems not enough to account for overwhelming Barbarian uprisings, being rushed without any strategic resources nearby, being stuck on a 1-tile island in the middle of nowhere, unexpected invastions from across the globe, ridiculously improbable losing streaks, AP dogpiles despite the best efforts to get into the club and so on.

With fair play (random maps, no regenerates, no reloads etc) I have a hard time imagining how this would be possible, let alone likely to happen in practice.

Yes, if I COULD win 50% of those...

It's a bit of an exagerration because even still I don't think 99% of solo deity is winnable to even God himself but... we're all learning the game still. There are some who like to think they haven't anything new to learn but... even if u DID at one point know everything, the last patch will again throw stuff out the window...

Obsolete I miss your walkthroughs... I accredit you with helping me move up from monarch to winning consistently on immortal. I'd love to see some of these diety games you speak of.

brades said:

Obsolete I miss your walkthroughs... I accredit you with helping me move up from monarch to winning consistently on immortal. I'd love to see some of these diety games you speak of.

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really???? someone actually learnt something from obsolete's impossible strategies!

tycoonist said:

really???? someone actually learnt something from obsolete's impossible strategies!

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I'm one of those.

tycoonist said:

really???? someone actually learnt something from obsolete's impossible strategies!

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I would not call them "impossible", I would call them "unique". And yes, I did learn things from obsolete's walkthroughs, since they are different from most games.

30-35% wins(marathon): agg. neighbours declare ~90% of the time(~30% of the games lost - you can luck out if the agg. one is also close to someone with high peace rating so they start annoyed with each other and the agg. one lets you be and goes after the peaceful guy), forced to deny some requests which sour up those who give -2 to refusing - like cathy asking for philo, paper, edu x3(~5% of the games lost), main rival lucking out and researching key mil. techs. instead of diverting(~10% of the games lost), another continent being taken over by someone/another continent in a total love fest/another continent deciding to invade you right after they discover you(~5% of the games lost), mistakes I've made(~15-20% of the games lost).

That being said, I've found late game so sluggish I ended 1 game(like playing till I get the movie) while having about 30 saves in a tbc folder waiting; bribing the ais in world wars late game slows everything down dramatically, probably due to the amount of units(but ok, that's more of a hardware problem).

the above for: marathon, play now, fractal, random leader.

p.s. - ergo, I'd say close to flawless play would bring a 50-60% win rate or something like that. Should be higher on normal speed, as you'd get declared way less(which is consistent with games posted here), but have to take in acct. settling/taking decissions early game without enough map info.

Marathon = AI nerf.

I expect Normal speed games to be harder.

bc easier on normal(lower chance of declaration due to less turns), ad harder(when on offence, obviously harder). But when pants down(bc), imho easier on normal - for instance, tried out of curiousity http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=288368 2nd attempt 10 times, got rushed before settling 2nd city 8 out of 10.