1000 Beakers! Per Turn!

I've read through this thread and really like a lot of the ideas in it. I'm curious as to one point though. I wonder why you limit your cities to just the size supported by a Colosseum, and not build a theater too. Granted not every city has the size or food to grow to size 9 (11 with circus) but even just added two more citizens is more than enough to make up for the additional maintenance of the theater. Is it the simply the opportunity cost of producing the theater or is there something I'm missing?
 
I've read through this thread and really like a lot of the ideas in it. I'm curious as to one point though. I wonder why you limit your cities to just the size supported by a Colosseum, and not build a theater too. Granted not every city has the size or food to grow to size 9 (11 with circus) but even just added two more citizens is more than enough to make up for the additional maintenance of the theater. Is it the simply the opportunity cost of producing the theater or is there something I'm missing?

I think you want to start harvesting science/gold in your non-production cities at some point.

I usually try to run them for production (i.e., work mines and mills) to get the core set of buildings (colliseum, monument, library, university, market, whatever else may make sense like mint, harbor, seaport, etc) then move those citizens out of production into the specialist slots and/or TPs. In the pre-patch world, this meant almost no production since there were a lot of science specialists. With only 4 citizens there's only so much you can do. At some point you need to stop investing and start harvesting science and gold, because a) that's the point of building all those science and gold buildings and b; the game will be over soon enough.

Howver, as you point the theater easily pays for itself by working a couple more trading posts. I do sometimes queue up the theatre and produce it very slowly. One way to do it is to let the pop break the city's happiness cap and take the extra guy and have him work the mill or mine if you can afford the overall happiness hit. If it's going to take more than 30 turns or the city isn't going to have TPs to work it's feels better just to cap it switch to wealth and be done with it.
 
Deity is a very different animal than the lower difficulties when it comes to ICS. Some considerations:

1. AIs with more cash.
2. AIs that REX like mad.
3. You have to play tech catchup early on. Need a military tech advantage to win war, unless you have a broken unique unit. So war for land is not a solid early option.

The game constraints definitely steer you towards REXing, because you need luxuries to sell for Research Agreements, which allows you to keep up on tech. You can't get the luxuries from early war because it's simply not feasible most of the time, or has a huge opportunity cost. The AIs are expanding like mad, so if you don't settle quickly, you'll lose out on some luxuries and city-locations.

You're forced to ICS like mad and turtle until you come upon a military tech advantage. This times nicely to the end of your happiness consolidation phase, allowing your excess happiness to be turned into more cities (or more citizens in your current cities).

Emperor difficulty and lower, it's not too hard to grab a military tech advantage much earlier, there is considerably less pressure for Research Agreements, etc. which frees up the ability to play differently (ex: less cities + puppets) and still keep up or get ahead in tech.

This is my issue with Civ5 at the moment - Deity play is extremely homogeneous, but any difficulty below is not challenging enough. I think I'll stop playing Continents, because the impetus for Astronomy for overseas RAs/luxury sales is such a limiting factor on other strategies.

What do you usually go for your military tech advantage in Deity? I'm starting to get a part of the skill for Deity gameplay, and I got two diplo wins recently by rexing like mad and not fighting a war the whole game. I just spammed gold (trade routes, luxuries and trading posts - in that order, probably) to bribe the necessary city states (counting on AI's stupidity, since someone usually has 10x more gold then I do and they don't use it for the CS's).

So, it's the warfare I still don't feel confortable with. Would be great to hear your ideas.
 
Great thread! I used ideas here to gain a diplo victory at 1665, which was my first pre-1920 victory (Emperor, large PerfectWorld3 map, standard speed, Babylon). I previously prioritized city state alliances and then (cash allowing) initiated RAs. So this time, based on comments here, I reversed that, keeping very good track of RAs and when new RAs became available. (It may be a mistake, but I don't like starting RAs until I know I can finish up all of the Classical Era techs. I also have my own house rule not to steer RAs.) I was much more aggressive in selling resources I didn't need. I settled 4 cities very quickly (2 for resources, 1 in strategic location). Around 1 AD I started a long siege of Gao (had 2 longswordsmen and 2 catapults) and that led eventually to 4 very nice puppet cities, and a lot of room for these and my core cities to grow (and some very promoted units to keep the peace for the rest of the game). After this conquest I pretty much went the rest of the game with 2 civs at Friendly (Mont and Genghis, do they like you for aggression?) and 4 others varying between Neutral, Guarded and Hostile. I had 5 or 6 RAs running at most times. Had something like 997 beakers in the end, and I had only just built research lab in my capital but not yet in other cities.

Edit: One useful tip. You can influence how your puppets work the land. Just remember that they always emphasize gold. So if they are not doing to well in production, give them some production tiles that they will choose to work (e.g., if you trade-post that hill they will work it).
 
Not the fastest, but just to show it's doable via no RA/GS bulbs (Deity with Japan)

 
Top Bottom