Surviving the early game in Deity

[edibleshrapnel]

Playing the mighty Poland right now on Pangea, huge, epic, deity. Just established third city near Indonesia, and right now he is parading a MASSIVE carpet of doom units around mine, right now he has like 8 composites and archers, like 8 Kris swordsman and warriors, and like 3 catapults. I have like 4 warriors and 3 archers, about to get construction and upgrade.

I've tried to buy DoW from England and the Ottomans to take away the pressure, but they won't DoW indonesia for anything. In a jam, how can I either hold all my cities, or avoid a conflict all together? The two ones he is going for are protected somewhat by lakes, mountains, and rivers, so that should help. Can I weasel out of this?

 

[danaphanous]

It sounds like you chose your cities wisely if you got closest city on a hill with some river/mountain bonuses. If you can't bribe or can't afford to bribe you'll have to fight him off. Don't worry, 3 swordsmen and 4 composites should be plenty if you pick the right battleground. Just prepare, fortify swordsmen in a couple places to limit attack points to the city. If he's just moving them around this doesn't mean he'll attack, but if he does you should be fine. I've held off many an early attack on Deity--Don't stress out, just prepare for it. Fighting is fun!

You want him to attack a city on a hill with walls, preferably with a river crossing as this makes your swordsmen last longer. If I forward-settle I try to pick a mountain-hill spot if at all possible and the opposing side of a river from the future aggressor. For future Deity/pangaea games, don't settle in flat grassland with tons of juicy luxuries near an AI with a large military or you're just asking to lose it. Very hard to protect a city like that from the Deity unit-carpets. even walls won't be enough. You want a city with enough backward protection that you can have multiple archers firing over it. I got lucky in my current huge/pangaea/Deity game with a mountain range and border hills to build with making my empire pretty safe. You could call it luck, but I call it taking advantage of terrain. There were plenty of settlement spots that I could've chosen that would've fallen, but I chose targets that would be difficult to assault so I could build a smaller early military. Goes a long way. Already fought off 2 invasions with just a handful of troops.

Many players act like the only way to play Deity is to bribe so you can skimp on early military. I disagree, and there's situations where it doesn't work effectively. I tend to take the more robust road of actually building some early military and engaging an early rush. If nearby AI ask for more then a luxury to be bribed then sometimes it hurts your empire more to bribe, depends on the threat. And sometimes an AI you bribe won't even attack even if you spent a lot of luxes/gold to bribe them too. Particularly, if they had a good relationship with the civ you are trying to get them to attack. So you can end up giving away a lot for guys that won't even help. You want to bribe someone you suspect doesn't like the target too much. Then 9/10 they will at least send a few troops. But the one surefire way to resist early rushes is to think about defense early as you are settling rather then just plopping cities in the best yield spots with no regard for defense: A lower-difficulty habit you should consider altering if you don't think about this already.

 

[phillipwyllie]

Buy walls and go for the catapults first then the Comp bows. Hopefully he will waste all his melee units and you wont have to worry. Also you should try getting Indonesia to DOW as he seems to have the largest army might just go for it. If so put down some forts and fortify some units in them, as a DOW from Indonesia is probably %100.

 

[beetle]

Surviving the early game in Deity is definitely a trick!

I've tried to buy DoW from England and the Ottomans to take away the pressure, but they won't DoW indonesia for anything... Can I weasel out of this?

You are bribing the wrong side! The usual tactic is bribing your enemies to attack your friends. Be the weasel!

I have like 4 warriors and 3 archers, about to get construction and upgrade.

How close are you to upgrading your Warriors to Swords? It is a huge difference, especially against a few OP Kris. You will hardly be attacking at all with your melee units, just fortifying in place outside of the city under siege. And you have a spare, so that it all good. Except that Warriors cannot stand up to Swords and CBs.

The two ones he is going for are protected somewhat by lakes, mountains, and rivers, so that should help.

Seven contemporary units in the right place can hold off an arbitrarily large swarm of AI units. It really comes down to terrain.

OTOH, stretching seven units to protect two cities is problematic. But the AI probably is gunning straight for your cap and will ignore the other city until things get very bad for him (and by then, it will be too late).