Deity: What am I missing?

[jrwh]

It would help to get specific areas you are struggling with to pinpoint which improvements can be made. Here are some basic tips that helped me a lot though:

City placement is more important to defending early war than your army

• Try to place cities on hills as it gives combat strength bonus, and allows garrisoned units to shoot over adjacent rough terrain
• Try to place cities so that there's rough terrain between the city and your neighbors; their units will have to move adjacent to your city to attack it, buying you time
• Use mountains and other terrain to create chokepoints; the fewer tiles you can be attacked from, the less army you need to defend the city
• Check for peace treaty every single turn; the AI will misjudge the situation and accept peace just as they are about to run you over, so hold out as long as you can

Take advantage of the deity AI bonuses by making them your own

• Deity AI has a gold bonus, which means you can get tons of early gold
• Prioritize improving luxuries and strategic resources with your workers to sell to the AI
• Sell duplicate luxuries for 7gpt, and strategic resources for 2gpt each
• Deity AI has tons of early workers, steal them if you have a close neighbor
• Be patient, as a city shot plus an attacking unit or two can kill you - also be aware of enemy units zone-of-controlling you within city-shot range
• In addition to saving you hammers from not building workers, it slows down your neighbor from expanding and building their army as they replenish workers
• AI does not see flat land tiles that are 2 tiles from their border, so use this to plan good locations for stealing multiple workers as they try to improve the same tile over and over
• Aggressive civs seem to "respect" you for attacking them first, making them more friendly to you later (weird I know, but I've seen this behavior in multiple games)
• After you've taken your fill of workers from your neighbor, make peace and send them a trade route
• Trade routes give science to the less-advanced trade partner; the bigger the disparity, the more the science
• Since deity AI starts the game with a several tech advantage, you get much science from the early trade routes
• They will often reciprocate by sending you their own trade routes, which means even more science
• Transition your trade routes to internal food trade routes, as growth is very important for science in the long term

Beeline techs, especially science techs

• Regardless of your victory type, you will need science to unlock key techs; the sooner you get these techs, the faster you win the game
• Writing - Libraries
• Philosophy - National College
• Education - Universities
• Astronomy - Observatories (only applicable if you have cities next to mountains)
• Scientific Theory - Public Schools
• Plastics - Research Labs
• In general you want to take as few detours as possible on your way to each of these techs
• Get techs that are vital to your victory condition (military techs for domination, hotel/airport tech for tourism, etc)
• Get techs to improve your resources
• Get techs for happiness buildings as you need them
• Get military techs as you feel you need them for defense
• Otherwise - beeline!

 

[SebastianAllen43]

I can't get past the early game when attempting a victory on Deity. Forward settled pretty much every time.

 

[beetle]

@SebastianAllen43, try the recent CDG games or the VS series that I am posting for the next few weeks. Lots of helpful people, eager to give pointers. I would agree that the forward settling at Deity is one of the most annoying AI behaviors. It is tricky to circumvent, but there are techniques that work pretty reliably even for mediocre Deity players like myself.

 

[Grendeldef]

What Beetle says there. Also stealing workers acts as a nice way of changing their expansion plans to head another direction and moreover, forward settle to them, make peace in convenient time, send a caravan right after that and you'll get a DoF way more often than not.
Another way is to settle a troll city on an easily defensible position and enjoy lots of free xp which will soon turn into nice GG bombs. My 6th city in the aforementioned VS series with Attila is an example of that.

 

[carath63]

What Beetle says there. Also stealing workers acts as a nice way of changing their expansion plans to head another direction and moreover, forward settle to them, make peace in convenient time, send a caravan right after that and you'll get a DoF way more often than not.
Another way is to settle a troll city on an easily defensible position and enjoy lots of free xp which will soon turn into nice GG bombs. My 6th city in the aforementioned VS series with Attila is an example of that.

I see tips like these and just cannot see how to make them work. For example, when I play and discover an AI worker, the next turn the AI will either move the worker into the city or cover it with a unit to defend it. If they don't do that, and I am able to steal it from them, there are units around that just destroy my unit and take the worker back again. Out of my past 10 or so attempts to start a deity cultural game with Napolean, I was successful at stealing an AI worker once.

The AI forward settles me by turn 25 or so in almost all of my games, unless I am completely isolated. By turn 25 I am just about ready to send out my first settler, probably only have a scout or two with my warrior, but they are all out scouting the terrain. Poland is that worst for this. Sometimes my scout gets about 6 tiles from my capital and runs into Warsaw or the first expansion city from Poland. My past couple of starts I'll have space for one additional city between my capital and the sea, and then there will be an AI about 10-12 tiles in one direction and 10-12 tiles in another direction and they both forward settle on me, leaving me nowhere to expand.

I watch "let's play"s often. I don't see this behavior in those games, and the build order and timing of the expansions doesn't seem any different than what I am trying to do. It is very frustrating, because that early in the game I just don't see how you are supposed to stop that.

 

[mbbcam]

To some extent, the amount of space you have to settle depends on the map script. I started using Hellblazers map scripts because they are a little more generous with the terrain. But you can also give yourself a bit more room by setting the sea level to low. Setting the age of the world to 5 million (or whatever it is) rather than 4 will reduce the number of mountains, which gives a little more space.

I'm not sure of the mechanics of allowing embassies, but I usually don't agree to them at first, because it seems to me it tends to trigger the "They covet lands you own" mechanism. I suspect it might encourage forward settlement, but I'm no expert.

In those cases where they forward settle before they have met you -- well, that is just chance. But some might see it as an opportunity rather than a problem. It means you can send a caravan to their city to leech science, and it gives you a target for early war.

When it comes to stealing workers, I find it is usually necessary to be very patient. Nowadays, I sometimes have to wait five or six turns in a good spot before I get the chance. I think the AI behaviour may have been patched since some of the old videos were made, and workers are better defended. But waiting a few turns seems to provide an opportunity. On the other hand, City States often provide a constant stream of workers. I pledge to protect all nearby CSs (I might be imagining things, but I suspect this makes it less likely the AIs will do the same) then make sure I go back around turn 17-18. At times you have to wait until about turn 26 before you see a worker. Sometimes the terrain is simply not favourable, and one worker may be all you get. For second and subsequent workers you have to position yourself carefully, usually not on a hill where you can be seen. I have taken as many as 8 or 9 workers from a CS, but that was rather exceptional, and largely due to favourable terrain.

The number of scouts you build may depend on the type of map. Three is fairly common for Pangaea. I have seen old videos in which good players built four or five on Pangaea, but on older versions of the game.

I always set my options to autosave the game every turn, and keep 300 turns. That means I can reload and try something different at any point. It is a good way to learn, particularly with worker stealing. First try rushing in (and getting killed!) then reload and see how long you have to wait before you get a better opportunity. The exit strategy is crucial, I find.

You don't say what kind of maps you are playing, but it might be an idea to stick to Hellblazers Pangaea until you have had a few decent games. Practise the techniques for a while. Might also be worth installing the Really Advanced Setup mod and choosing a few non-expansionist civs as your opponents until you have got the techniques refined.

 

[beetle]

I see tips like these and just cannot see how to make them work. For example, when I play and discover an AI worker, the next turn the AI will either move the worker into the city or cover it with a unit to defend it. If they don't do that, and I am able to steal it from them, there are units around that just destroy my unit and take the worker back again. Out of my past 10 or so attempts to start a deity cultural game with Napolean, I was successful at stealing an AI worker once.

You are not really doing much worse than me. I do not count on worker stealing, but I try to give myself opportunities. I am three-for-three in Versus Series that I have posted recently, so that is quite unusual for me!

The AI forward settles me by turn 25 or so in almost all of my games, unless I am completely isolated. By turn 25 I am just about ready to send out my first settler, probably only have a scout or two with my warrior, but they are all out scouting the terrain.

Again, I will encourage you to play shared maps and post your early game experiences. T25 is pretty good timing for starting with your settlers. If you have not sold embassies, you should be able to plant three expos most games.

I watch "let's play"s often. I don't see this behavior in those games, and the build order and timing of the expansions doesn't seem any different than what I am trying to do.

If the video is not from a game in the past couple of years, the AI behavior will be quite different.

 

[Blatc]

catath63, a few notes on worker stealing
1) look for situations where the AI attack will be reduced in some form:
a) target a tile in their 3rd ring (a bit later in the game). Identify a horse/iron/wheat/etc. tile in their 3rd ring that will be a high priority; grab multiple workers from such a location
b) if the city is next to a river, identify tiles in 2nd ring where that river will prevent their units from attacking you and you'll only be hit by the city (and ranged unit in city)
c) rough terrain tile in 2nd ring, often mining resource on hill

2) assume they have a unit on tiles that you cannot see, until you can prove otherwise. As mentioned above, be patient if you are unsure

3) once you have a civilian unit, use it to 'scan' the area (I think the term used on here is 'radar'), to identify if they have units on the tiles you cannot see. You can do the same to scan for barbarians and other units while walking your workers back. Click 'Move Mode' (M) and scan over an area; it will identify where units are in terrain you cannot see.

4) the AI will often send their units to clear out a barb camp. This is where being patient and carefully observing their unit movement pays off.

5) two-pronged attack. If your scout upgrades, you can use that unit in a few ways to help:
a) capturing workers itself (be careful re: nearby units, ensure you survive)
b) drawing away their units, ideally killing them. Set up a situation where you attack first, preferably with a defensive advantage to their melee counter-attack (river or your unit on rough terrain), and you can either kill them with another round of attacks or you back off and fire such that they cannot respond (i.e. you are on a forest tile, they attack you, you move back 1 tile onto a hill and fire again, but they cannot melee attack you that turn only move onto the forest tile).

6) check to see if a peace deal is available. Once that is possible, you can make worker steals that would have resulted in losing your unit(s), but you make peace.

7) double worker steal! Every once in a while, you find a double worker steal situation. Early on, this will be by luck; later in the game, there is more influence from your careful positioning and observation of their movement patterns. Once they are willing to make peace is an opportune time to end the war with a double worker steal, using 2 units that have positioned themselves near 2 cities.