Finished a playthrough on Diety

[JaredPWagner]

Edit: As requested I have posted a detailed guide on how to win LOR on Deity in the strategy forum it can be found at the following address
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=410032

Just finished my third game of Legends of Revolutions

Games settings:
Difficulty -> Deity
Size -> Large
Speed -> Marathon
Legends of Revolutions settings -> Default

Game 1: Bad luck with barbs -> early death

Game 2: Watched in horror as my civilization collapsed into three factions allowing my neighbor to march in and destroy my civ.

Game 3: Third time is the charm won a space race victory in 2037

Overall, its the best experience I have ever had playing CIV thanks for all of your hard work. Your time and effort here are obvious. Truly a masterpiece.

There were a handful of things that I felt were out of balance, however, and I wanted to post some feedback on these for your consideration.

1) Ranged bombardment, a fun mechanic but overpowered because the AI does not know how to handle it. I used the same stack of artillery to bombard hundreds of enemy units and subsequently destroy them with almost no loses. The AI did not even range bombard my stack sitting outside his capital despite multiple opportunities. As it stands now Range bombard effectively reduces the difficulty by at least one full level. I recommend having it off by default.

2) Representation, consider reducing the stability bonus. Its a bit too good at +2/+2 it effectively removes stability concerns until very late in the game.

3) Pyramids are a bit overpowered, because representation is too powerful. Early pyramids remove stability worries give happiness and extra research. I won the game on diety by building pyramids early. I had no stability issues at all while all my neighbors suffered civil wars. Fixing number 2) above should fix this.

4) Heavy footmen are too weak. Almost all enemy stacks will have at least one mounted unit so there is almost no reason to build heavy footmen over pikeman. Pikeman are good enough city attackers that they are superior for that purpose as despite the 10% penalty. Consider giving heavy footmen a slight boost or better yet a small downgrade to pikemen.

5) The Skirmisher, an archer with 4 strength is too powerful. With the base +75% city hills defence + 3 hills upgrades (easily gotten from barbs) these things have an effective hill city defense of > 10.

Thats it. Minor points all, fantastic mod. I got hours and hours of fun out of it. Thanks!

 

[phungus420]

......

 

[phungus420]

Man would be awesome to see the rundown of how you win a default LoR rules game on deity....

Didn't think that is possible. If you could show how you did this on the Strategy forums, would be cool. So far no one has beat the 1.0 AI on diety; you beat it on a mod, but so far as I know you're the first. Would be cool to see how you did it.

 

[phungus420]

This is the last diety strategy game I've seen:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=376566&highlight=diety

You're adding Revolutions on that though?

Does that help or hurt as the human player? Do you think you can win without revolutions? The above is the only link I've seen of someone trying to beat Diety with Better AI 1.0, and if you can do it with LoR, seems to me it would be all the harder. Would be intresting to read how you can beat it on diety....

 

[JaredPWagner]

Revolutions definitely makes it easier to win on diety difficulty but it is still really really hard. You have to be super careful and optimize each turn. Started my game on January 3rd, and did not win until January 23rd but that's marathon for you. Well that and real life.

To win on deity you have to overcome three challenges.

Challenge 1) Raging Barbarians-The AI swarms you with never ending barbarians.

These are archers for the most part and are nasty especially with improved AI as they like to destroy improvements. They need to be wiped out without taking any real losses and without slowing your development of settlers for city 2 and 3. There are only two ways to efficiently do this in LOR.

a) Pray for copper in your initial city cross and build axemen. With 2 strength promotions and an anti archer promotion. They have win % in the mid 90s.
All of your initial units will quickly have 10xp from constant barbarian battles so the promotions will come quickly.

b) Play the Mali and build skirmishers (that's what I did) they have even better odds then axemen are amazing city defenders and don't require copper. Basically making the Mali far and away the best civ for a Deity victory.

Challenge 2) The land rush - Don't let the AI take all the good spots

The AI has a huge advantage against barbarians so they won't be slowed down by the swarms of archers. Add in the fact that they have two starting cities to your one and their 40% build rate advantage and it makes for an very uneven start. Even with optimal play you will be far far behind. Most of the AI had 4 cities before I built my second, The one AI with the imperialistic trait built his 8th city about the same time I built my third.

a) Some of this is luck if you are too close to the other civs at the start you are pretty much done for however you play.

b) To give yourself the best chance beeline bronze working and clear cut any forest you can. Every turn at this point is critical.

c) Civs that start with mining are best as they can get bronze working faster.

Challenge 3) Avoiding revolutions - If any of your cities request independence you have pretty much lost.

You have to expand very rapidly or the AI will take all the land. This quickly ruins your economy. I dipped to a brief low 30% right after I build my 5th city. At this point in the game you don't have any way to please your cities other then bribery which is not much of an option when your research rate is already only 30%.

a) The solution to this is the pyramids. Representation is the way to go. Skipping from despotism -4/-4 stability to representation +2/+2 removes early stability concerns. That's not even counting the stability from the +3 happiness in all of your cities.

b) Bribe if you have to. There is a permanent -2 happiness penalty if you ever deny citizens independence (a bit to harsh in the early game consider making it on a countdown like slavery whip unhappiness) As it stands now it is pretty much game over if you ever get this in the early game. Ruins any city where it pops up. I had to bribe the city farthest from my capital once while I was waiting for pyramids. At a 30% research rate it sets you back by about 10 turns of research so its a big deal. As a balance issue I felt that the cost to bribe was a bit too expensive in the early game and a bit too cheep in the late game when it only set me back by about a 1 turn of research.

Those are the big ones. If you accomplish those three then good playing will win the game. The really hard part is managing the land grab. If you succeed in getting decent spots for your initial cities the 40% production disadvantage can be overcome with time.
LOR is easier on Deity then vanilla BTS with equivalent AI upgrades for the following reasons.

1) AI expand so quickly that they almost all have early internal revolutions. This keeps them busy and slows them down.

2) You can join the AI in declaring war on their rebels. The rebels are not usually much of a military threat and its a free diplomacy bonus and keeps the AI from attacking you later.

3) Revolutions and barbarian civs are a constent source of weak civs. Unlike vanilla BTS you are no longer the weakest kid on the block. Aggressive civs have more attractive targets to conquer then you.

4) Ranged bombard as mentioned above.

5) Skirmishers as mentioned above.

6) Tech diffusion helps the player much more then the AI as the AI is far ahead for much of the game.

That said easier does not mean less fun. The game was definitely the most fun I have ever had playing CIV.
I have attached a turn zero save game for the Deity game I played. If interested I'll send you a 2036 save game so you can see how I played it out. Its 3.2 megs and over the upload limit. Send me a pm and I'll e-mail it to you.

Edit: All that typing and I didn't actually answer your question. I think it can be done without revolutions, I am somewhat confident I could do it with skirmishers in their current form. Without them or tech diffusion I am not sure. The axemen can handle the barbarians with early copper but they make for far inferior city defenders.

 

[JaredPWagner]

Found a save from AD 1642. Latest save that less then the 2.0mg upload limit.
Still a bit behind at this point but almost caught up to the leading civs.

 

[rodnok21]

Congrats on your Deity win. I agree with your points regarding Pyramids and ranged bombardment overpowered (I dont like the latter anyway, so I turned it off). Representation has just too much advantages especially for Revolution mods.

Do you play with aggressive AI and ruthless AI? (I will look at the save when I am not on my laptop ). I do and I got problems with AIs waging war too much and consistently asking for help against each other. I help them against 1city states, but the rest, well... When they make peace, even some distant AI can send a SoD against you then .
And when I agree, I get negative penalties with others (you declared on our friend) anyway. Maybe they should forget such negatives after some time...

Also, I found Marathon speed to be easier than Epic somehow. I felt that during the last year with previous versions. With this one, in the last game I got kicked my ass by several ruthless AIs at once on Epic (Immortal difficulty). I also felt I didnt get enough time to play with my Gallic warriors (I picked Brennus for both games), so I switched to Marathon. Early in the Middle Ages I am already the first in score and missing just a few techs the others have. But I had a better start too.

Skirmishers definitely seem to be way to go for the Deity. I hate already when Mansa turns to be around. Impossible to conquer early and teching a lot. I can try them for Deity, but I dislike Financial trait, its too strong

Waging war is also beneficial for human. AI is good when it can choose its own time to attack and send a SoD, but when you declare, its just stupid. Even if you dont conquer a big area (which could be a disaster anyway because of the revolutions) one can cripple an AI civilization just by war and pillage.
To address this, I think war weariness could be higher, especially for the Hereditary rule, which has only advantages over Despotism nowadays.
I play on Small size (Perfectworld2g mapscript) and got the first unhappy citizen because of the war when I conquered a third city after many turns.
Tech difusion seems too strong to me as well. For my next Immortal try I will probably turn it off.

 

[JaredPWagner]

That game was with default settings so no ruthless AI. Now that I have beat it on that level I plan to try a small map, fast game with ruthless AI for my next game.
I wanted to try minor tribes as well but that seems to be broken on Deity.
Do you play with both agressive and ruthless AI on? Or does turning ruthless on give you the max effect by itself? I am curious to see how much harder fast is having never played it at that speed.

I believe, but have not tested, that you can avoid the negative penalities from "you declared war on our friend if you declare war before other civs have met the rebels".
In the game above I declared war on the Ottomans as soon as they formed. I don't remember getting any diplo penality. If thats the case you sould probably declare war on all rebels as soon as you meet them.

If you don't like the Mali, you can play Egypt, Ramses II, has Organized as a trait which is good for early pyramids, and their War Chariots are as overpowered as Skirmishers. I plan to try them for my fast game.

 

[rodnok21]

I use both Aggressive and Ruthless AI on. However I dont use tribal villages, vassals and barbarians are normal, not "raging". But as I tested it for a few minutes in the late night yesterday, even the normal barbs on Deity will be probably tough. Established my second city next to copper and there were already two barbs cities very close - and these are dangerous when going to a full civ, as they get a plenty of troops. I saw starting AIs to be easily killed by them.

I am ok with Mali, at least I dont have to worry if they turn to be around and seems I need some advantage. I also like them to be Spiritual. I think one needs to turn on slavery only temporarily. Also missionaries were good scouts in my last Immortal war. I dont use scouts normally (maybe I should use them as medics) and I can always use a missionary in a conquered city then (In that immortal game with Celts I went for the early religion and stonehenge, that was a financial and diplomatic advantage later). Religion is of course not an option now and I am not sure if Pyramids are. Seems I will need shields for war, there isnt much free space...

 

[JaredPWagner]

Sounds like a tough game. I don't use scouts often but I will build one when there are large non forested non hilll areas to explore. You can move them just 1 space at a time instead of two and they almost never lose them. When I do build them I tend to delete them however once I have explored enough to know where I want to place my cities and fogbusters and or when they start costing me gold. On Marathon food is much more valuable then hammers so I try to build my workers and settlers almost entirely with chopped hammers which gives me plenty of hammers to pump into warriors in between forest removals.

I have never had religion work for me on Deity. You can never get Hinduism or Buddism as the AI will always beat you to it. The deeper religions are too costly to go for and too risky. Bronze Working, Archery, Mysticism, and Pottery are all too critical to wait. I usually skip the entire religious line and backfill later.

Those Barbarian cities are deadly. I usually build 2-4 warriors while I am researching hunting and then archery and send them out as fogbusters as soon as they are built to prevent city spawning. Barbarian cities tend to form right after you found your second city and almost always near non sea food resources and copper. As soon as you have skirmishers warriors have no use other then fogbusters and if you lose them its not a big deal. What really limits you here, however, is unit costs. If your empire is only producing 15 commerce a turn you really need to keep your unit costs near 0.

 

[rodnok21]

So, I got quickly killed in my first try and started a second one. Still a Small map, Perfectworld2g (my comp cant handle more and I dont like managing tons of units/cities anyway), 6 starting civilizations (that was a compromise between 5 and 7 - PW maps are somewhat bigger, so I went with 7 civs on my Immortal game, but 6 other Deity civs wouldnt maybe give me any space to settle ). Normal barbs, Marathon, Deity, aggressive and ruthless AI.

My start was full of forests, also there wasnt anyone north of me (perfect), just tons of tundra and ice without resources. No luxuries were around me, just stone, so Pyramids were an obvious choice. But there are some nice health resources.

Established Timbuktu on a plain hill, went BW for chopping, Hunting-Archery for Skirmishers, then Masonry I think. Found two more cities. The rest was covered by a southern neighbour (Frederick), empty tundra and a barb city. I've even built Great Wall before the Pyramids. Its very cheap with Stone and all advantages coming from it are very important for this game. Even a settled Great Spy is... just great. I used GW and spies last year in lower difficulties, but soon I thought its overpowered

Frederick's Stonehenge culture attracted many poor confused Malinesans, so to prevent the city switch we built the Clone Army after the Pyramids were finished. Oh, these werent exactly clones, but all were Skirmishers (did I mention no copper around?). Plus three battering rams. Some were greatly trained to fight on hills - that paid off as that Stonehenge city was on a hill. Most got 10 XP on barbs. The Clone Army conquered two German cities, established a road connection to Russia and pillaged round the border. As usually, AI just collapses when attacked... But he was involved in another war too.
That barb city mentioned before was impossible to kill for all of us, so Mongolians raised an army there and since then they are still fighting the Russians in the south.

Before the war I've found another city on the coast to cover a nice spot and because Pottery wasnt ready yet, I struggled financially. I needed units to counter the revolutionary dissent and to fight, but couldnt afford more The Deity is really hard there.
When the first revolt came, not two (as I expected) but 5 out of my 6 cities went to revolt! Established a peace treaty with Germans and Skirmishers magically returned home to fight again. Killed revolutionaries quickly and I saw these 2 unhappy faces for "not accepting the demands" remained there in each of 5 cities. I was ready to accept that, didnt want to reload, but after some time they disappeared, maybe because the revolt bar got better?

Tech diffusion helped a lot. Maybe too much. I even got some techs entirely for free. It was Polytheism (ok, thats cheap) and then Monarchy. Some others were 80% finished. For my next try I will definitely go with no tech diffusion and rely more on the spies. Maybe there is a way to tune Tech Difusion somehow?

Now I am somewhere around 300 BC if I remember correctly, just got Alphabet and Mathematics. I think its a playable position, will continue later. I still have 6 cities, a fourth position in the score and cottages will grow more. The leader has 14 cities, but the others have around 7. He had already some revolts and I hope there will be more, as his favourite civic is Hereditary rule.

Its a great game after all, just that the free techs from the diffusion were a bit boring. Pity you cant turn it off during the game. But maybe I need that so the AI wont hammer my Skirmishers with Knights

 

[phungus420]

Thanks for the feedback guys, I will slightly nerf representation in regards to revolution stability. Also I will remove the free first strike from skirmshers. Are there any other balance issues that come to light in Diety that you think needs to be improved?

 

[JaredPWagner]

@phungus Its the least I can do. I have gotten hours and hours of fun out of your mod thanks for all your work. The only other balance issues I have noticed so far are.

1) The financial bonus for trafalgar square is a bit overpowered especially for financial leaders as it makes all ocean squares +3 commerce and never expires.

2) Egypts war chariots bonus of +50% against archers make them too effective for early rushing especially since you only have to research one tech in order to start building them.

3) Tech Diffusion as mentioned above is too powerful. Helps the player too much on Deity.

4) Maybe a slight nerf to pikemen but I am less confident about this one. They may be fine as is.

5) On large maps, reduced barbarian city spawning in the new world would make the game more interesting as it would let the civilizations that do spawn grow larger. On the games I have played the new world civilizations never become major players because their are so many of them and they all only have a handful of cities. Letting large empires form in the new world would make them bigger threats in the late game if not eliminated early.

@Rodnok I am impressed that you managed to pull off an early offensive war. I've never managed to do that. Let me know how it goes. It might not be your computer causing the problems with large maps. I keeped getting memory allocation errors on my system with huge maps until I upgraded to a 64 bit operating system (windows 7). Once I did that the errors went away.

 

[phungus420]

1) The financial bonus for trafalgar square is a bit overpowered especially for financial leaders as it makes all ocean squares +3 commerce and never expires.

I don't like how Trafalgar Square and Brandenburg Gate copy existant World Wonder functions; no other Wonders do this, they are all unique. I'm going to create entirely new unique attributes for these two wonders eventually so that they are like the other wonders in the game (not sure what I'll do for the Gate, but Trafalgar will spawn a free sea attacking unit every 10 turns on normal speed -- will adjust to game speed).

2) Egypt's war chariots bonus of +50% against archers make them too effective for early rushing especially since you only have to research one tech in order to start building them.

They probably are, but they are exactly the same as BtS default immortals now, except they are less buffed over their default unit. I figure I'll leave them as is.

3) Tech Diffusion as mentioned above is too powerful. Helps the player too much on Deity.

Like I say I'm going to rebuild Revolutions from the ground up; which will include barbarian civ and tech diffusion. I'll be making some tweaks to it's functionality, and I'll be sure to make a togglable option in the Bug Interface to turn off Tech Diffusion for the human.

4) Maybe a slight nerf to pikemen but I am less confident about this one. They may be fine as is.

Any specifics here? I mean, tweak them how, and how should other units be effected, if at all, to make pikeman the base army unit when available; as occured historically.

5) On large maps, reduced barbarian city spawning in the new world would make the game more interesting as it would let the civilizations that do spawn grow larger. On the games I have played the new world civilizations never become major players because their are so many of them and they all only have a handful of cities. Letting large empires form in the new world would make them bigger threats in the late game if not eliminated early.

Look in the Bug Options, in the RevDCM tab you can tweak barbarian city spawning attributes; one of them is New World Civs specifically, and the tech grants and bonuses they get.

 

[JaredPWagner]

They probably are, but they are exactly the same as BtS default immortals now, except they are less buffed over their default unit. I figure I'll leave them as is.

Fair enough, but the persians did not start with the wheel as one of their starting tech. They had to research at least two techs before building immortals. If they are going to stay as is consider giving egypt a different starting tech. Fishing, Mysticism, or Hunting would be good.

Regarding pikemen I was thinking either a slight nerf to their bonus vs melee or a slight increase in their city attack penality. Not as confident on this one.

 

[Rodnok]

Jared: I dont get any errors, its just slow on larger maps. The turn times. I have 1 GB RAM only and lousy CPU. I also dont like many things to manage. But I am happy with small or standard maps. I changed to 24" screen, 1920x1080 resolution and LoR is so nice, even with my old graphics! Cant believe I am still having fun with Civ4 so late after the release of it and with the same hardware - thanks phungus and other creators of revolution mods! Before I found them I played always only 2-3 weeks in year or so. Now I cant stop

Jared: Have you tried that Deity play with Egyptians? I mean, you not only need to research 1 tech, but also to find the horses and not covered by trees, as they usually are on Pw2g maps. I tried starting that three times and they were never around. And considering the barbs (even without raging option on) and other civs going for AH early was a clear mistake. Also chariots are expensive now.

As for my game with Malinese, I did put it on hold so far. I almost killed the Germans and then it got boring somehow... 3 AIs remain, all having HR as favourite civic and two giants sharing the religion (I had to convert to theirs as well). No holy city and all are too far

As I like the start of the game and trying the different opening strategies the most (after the middle ages the game is boring for me usually ), I tried another Deity experiment: quecha rush. Standard map this time and with 2 extra AIs as Pw2 maps are a little bigger. Had a nice start, even managed to grab the religion while producing quechas, but then I got tied into a loong war with a creative-protective neighbour (the worst combination. Dido wanted to attack me anyway, so I had to strike first) and soon the other AIs viewed me as a target too. Perhaps Quechas are considered too weak in power-ratings (I never had more than 0.24 of others or so, usually less. It was ok when no one had Writing and carthaginians, aztecs (tied in another war) covered me, but just a few turns after I captured another city (needed gold and flood plains) and thus opened the way, two other civs came, declared war and my quechas didnt have a chance . Perhaps I also wasted time with wonders: as I wanted to have a chance later I went for GW.
Ruthless AI is really ruthless: when they see a weak target, they go for it.

As usually, I didnt have early resources here (world builder in that fatal end showed only iron) and that brought me to another idea:

Maya and Holkans, who do not need resources. Here you have a cheap unit which requires literally just 2 techs to build . And you need BW anyway. As Pacal got the protective attribut (its still the weakest one; I like it sometimes though, but I wanted to try something else) I changed him partially back to expansive-industrious through xml edit. Starting generating the map now...

As we already found 4 different good units for high level play, I dont think any of them is so overpowered except the Skirmish. Removing that extra strike sounds ok to me. Such units got really an advantage with improving the Guerilla promotion. AI likes the hills, but for normal units these are a trap against Guerillas.

 

[phungus420]

As usually, I didnt have early resources here (world builder in that fatal end showed only iron) and that brought me to another idea: Maya and Holkans, who do not need resources. Here you have a cheap unit which requires literally just 2 techs to build . And you need BW anyway. As Pacal got the protective attribut (its still the weakest one; I like it sometimes though, but I wanted to try something else) I changed him partially back to expansive-industrious through xml edit. Starting generating the map now...

Won my first Immortal game with Maya. Holkans did, indeed, save my ass; as the copper and horses were too far away, and wasn't able to secure the copper until my third city. The Holkans allowed me to defend, and also barb spawn bust, as you don't start seeing axeman for quite a bit, but they were imperative to have against the horde of archers and warriors, and also to keep barb cities from spawning. After that I rushed the 300 spartans, and was able to take out my closest AI neighbor with the 300 led stack of Holkans.

 

[Rodnok]

Jared: have you tried that Start as minors option on Deity more? I tried it and it seems balancing things a little bit. Without tech diffusion its gonna be hard probably, but as minors they dont get early as many techs as you guys said in another thread so cant run away so fast. Its amazing that the animals start to be a problem suddenly, usually AIs deal with them Especially bears. I assumed initial barb onslaught so I went Masonry-BW-Hunting and built GW first. But the barbarians have only warriors in the beginning, even in their cities.

 

[JaredPWagner]

@phungus: Congrats on your immortal win. Spawn bust ftw

@Rodnok: Unfortunatally, its going to be a few weeks before I can sit down for another game. Big project at work due in a few weeks.
I'll probably stick with standard diety though. I like to lose which is what often happens to me on deity.

I am not a fan of any early unit getting a big bonus against archers as I
think it disrupts game balance.

I toyed around with egypt on deity but did not play an entire game.
with a bit of luck (horses able to be gotten by second city)
I believe it would be possibly to beat a dual or tiny map on diety well before 1000AD. With the following tech order.
1) AH + build worker, 2)Mining, 3)Bronze Working (chop)
with building nothing besides chariots as soon as horses come online.
Of course if you don't get horses there is a good chance you won't have
enough time to get bronze working before the barbs destroy your civ.

You brought up a good point about the guerilla promotion. Now that
I think more about it I think guerilla could use a slight nerf. The 50% withdraw it grants at tier III is just too good now that the promotion gives attack as well as defence bonuses.

 

[Rodnok]

So, I played over the weekend the beginning with Mayans and Start as minor civs, Marathon, no tech difusion and this combination is... weird . The AIs and barbarians are really nerfed in the beginning (that isnt a bad thing itself). They get usual 2 settlers, but not much extra besides that. Only financial problems (and my boredom of fighting holkans vs. warriors and chariots) stop Mayans from uniting the world very early It takes time AI to research BW and Wheel and connect the copper (if they have it) and even then either barbs frequently pillage the resources to them (I hate them, I want the pillaging money for myself!) or they arent able to build some decent stack of axemen. Usually even the more serious attacks consist of Chariots and maybe some 1-2 archers...
I played till the research of Writing and its funny I was the first to that even with my research fueled mainly by settled GGs and one Great Spy from GW. Interesting AIs dont give it a priority. They had some other techs I didnt need yet, but I will take with spies
Hopefully it will be interesting later or I can test some other civilization. I guess even protected archers can do similar job as Holkans without using UU so early.