Notes from 100+ Hours of Deity Play

[GKShaman]

These may be well known or not. Let me know.

I've noticed:

- Liberty's Representation (Social Policies cost 33% less with every new city founded or annexed) -

Absolutely crucial if playing or conquering with more than 4.Built 6 cities as India and conquered 3 Spanish cities. Needed that cultural discount. In the late game when the policies are 3k to 5k culture this matters.

- Going Tradition and Liberty is awesome! Finish Tradition and get some awesome Liberty bonuses.

- "Bulb" or Spend Great Writers AFTER 10 turns of a golden age. I believe they take the last 10 turns of culture and grant u that. Best to use during ideology time.

- "Bulb" Great Artists ESPECIALLY for World's fair or international games - The culture, production, and gold are crucial in competing with Deity AI.

- Autocracy's Lightning Warfare Tenet makes the WHOLE TREE worth it. 1-2 Modern Armor tanks can GET to and DESTROY 10 rocket artillery. Forces the AI to retreat.

Lightning Warfare: Great Generals receive +3 Movement. Armored units receive +1 Movement and +15% attack bonus, and ignore enemy ZOC.

- Science is King followed by Gold. Always Adopt Rationalism Opener and Secularism.

- Learn and Use Zone of Control. Retreat wounded units, but if a units gonna die (city bombardment, aircraft, artillery) then make its time count by killing something and or pillaging. For wars I have to remove "Quick Combat" from options.

- As known by now - some civs have OP bonuses and most other civs punish you for bad play. Poland is a civ that makes life awesome. India is a civ u need to know EXACTLY what ur doing.

In the end I had 11 15+ Pop Cities with a 35 POP capital and 7 20+ pop cities with 55 Happiness.

- India's UA is awesome. Just build good cities that give u new luxuries. India is very map reliant.

Interesting Notes and Comments:

Autocracy pretty much fully locks you into war. (I always chose Freedom, few times Order).

- This may be a WEAKNESS - I STILL ignore aircraft. I find it kind of annoying. Id rather just build Mobile SAMs or Anti Aircraft Guns and call it a day. Have u guys built aircraft?

IDEAL 10 unit Army for taking cities.:
4 Artillery or Rocket
3 Landships or Tanks
2 Anti Aircraft Guns
2 Machine Gun
1 Infantry

- How to keep up with science when warring?
manually plug specialists?
use spoils of war to buy science buildings?

In the Modern and Info Era - My armies are All SAMs, Rocket Artilleries, and Modern Armor Tanks.

Thoughts?

 

[zxcvbob]

I still can't win at Diety. I usually win at Immortal.

1) You never mentioned subs and battleships.
2) I do build aircraft if I have enough oil for it but they are not a high priority. I usually give the first ones Bombardment 1 and 2 and then Repair rather than siege promotions.
3) AA-guns and SAM's make splendid (but overpriced) infantry, and greatly reduce the number of fighters you need.

 

[GKShaman]

I still can't win at Diety. I usually win at Immortal.

1) You never mentioned subs and battleships.
2) I do build aircraft if I have enough oil for it but they are not a high priority. I usually give the first ones Bombardment 1 and 2 and then Repair rather than siege promotions.
3) AA-guns and SAM's make splendid (but overpriced) infantry, and greatly reduce the number of fighters you need.

I always build a navy to defend, not to attack. I need to be more comfortable with land and air warfare.

I should probably build nuclear missiles, put them on subs and have missile cruisers and wreak havoc everywhere.

But the early tech of these units (Frigate, ironclad, fighter, bomber are super clunky units that have limited range and health. I prefer having all three military buildings and building lvl 2 missile cruisers with repair and Lvl 2 rocket artillery with march.

But then ur opponent has these capabilities as well..

 

[zxcvbob]

Refrigeration is one of my favorite techs. You get submarines, hotels, and extended trade routes.

Whether you use them for offense or defense, subs are OP. The AI's generally don't know how to cope with them. Battleships do more damage to cities than artillery, and they can really tear up any land units that get too close (but watch out for AI bomber spam)

When I get to Robotics I generally spam missile cruisers; depends on the map. They are pretty cheap for that much firepower and they use no resources, but I like battleships better for the indirect fire. Ideally have both.

 

[poxpower]

I still can't win at Diety. I usually win at Immortal.

Probably you should focus on getting more efficient at 4-city tradition science victory.
The deity AI is very dumb and bad at everything and as long as you keep ahead on science, you will win before they amass a giant army of planes and nukes that can actually threaten you.

The main weapon for peace is bribes, not units. Military units are mostly useless in SP civ if you have a good economy and don't anger the AI (which mainly consists of forward-settling them). Then you can just bribe the other AI literally all game long for them to attack each other and leave you alone.

The cost of being declared war on is very expensive. For you to win a defensive war, you need 6-7 ranged units and 2-3 blockers units. This costs you a ton of production and upkeep all game long. Then when you get DoWed, you lose trade deals and city-state bonuses ( sometimes ) and you also are likely to lose caravans and even tiles when they get pillaged. It also encourages other AI to gang up on you, which means losing more deals and CS.
You might not lose a single unit, but you'll still be set back a lot whereas you could have just given them like 12GPT and they'd take their dumb army and lose half of it against another AI, making both of them weaker for the rest of the game as they waste production and money on deleting units against each other.

Preventing war with military is quite inefficient and costly, in the end. The AI absolutely isn't scared of any military you might have on Deity because all they do is spam units and wonders. You think 10 XBs is a lot, but they don't. They think you're weak because they have like 20 knights just running circles around their capital, draining their GPT lol.

 

[poxpower]

As for aircraft, they are mainly for domination in the late-game.
I hate it when the AI gets them because of all the bonuses they have on Deity. Planes negate the AI's stupidity for combat, at least until you get anti-air units like mobile sams and fighters.

Until then, the game just turns massively in the AI's favor because planes take no strategy to use. They just point them at a thing they want dead and then it dies and there's nothing you can do about it, whereas when the AI is stuck ground fighting, you can block off their attack and pick off all their units with ranged shots, basically killing 2-3 units per turn, for free, without ever losing yours. That's the only way to compete against the deity AI.

So once it gets to planes, generally what I want to do is peace out with the guys who have planes, then just kill everyone else ASAP, then come back to the planes AI by basically circling their capital with artillery, massing as many air units as I can nearby and then trying to take their city down in just one turn so they can't react with their 20 bombers.

 

[GKShaman]

As for aircraft, they are mainly for domination in the late-game.
I hate it when the AI gets them because of all the bonuses they have on Deity. Planes negate the AI's stupidity for combat, at least until you get anti-air units like mobile sams and fighters.

So once it gets to planes, generally what I want to do is peace out with the guys who have planes, then just kill everyone else ASAP, then come back to the planes AI by basically circling their capital with artillery, massing as many air units as I can nearby and then trying to take their city down in just one turn so they can't react with their 20 bombers.

Totally agree. There is the awkward period after rifleman to anti aircraft guns where on EPIC or tense games I've got to go down the bottom half of the tech tree.

Plus Cannons tech and Fertilizer are SWEET techs too. AND I love me some Neushstanwein!