99% of my spawn

[anonxanemone]

there is no justification for the hatred you are experiencing

I think people would have been more pleasant if the post was made in good faith. This and the other post is just a whine-fest with not much demonstration in willingness to learn about the game.

Edit: After much reflection on this exchange, I feel I owe @Manol0 an apology. A few of the comments were distracting from the issue of neighboring civs spawning to close to the player. I attributed them being "whiny" which is an unconstructive accusation.

Sincerest of apologies, @Manol0. All I ask is, next time, when you have difficulties with the game, please be as descriptive as you can (more than this and your previous post have been). Clearly, something isn't working correctly when taking on the challenge and the community members collectively might have a solution

 

[Enfant_Sauvage]

Meh... whatever

 

[Equilin]

I can upload the Save file for any of the "experts" want to try it. I dont know where I can see its seeds tho.

Where is the save file promised?

 

[Archon_Wing]

Nobody says you have to play on Deity.

Also 1 city, no improvements, no archery? I mean that might be acceptable on marathon speed. No offense, but wth were you even doing?

Honestly, you probably got lucky beating Immortal. That or, you kept rerolling there too.

 

[greenOak]

This is a brutal start and the people telling you to “get good” are out of line. That being said, I have a hard time believing this is normal unless you’re adding more civs in the game setup. I avoid early war more often than not on deity and I don’t build very many military units. Also, maps like lakes and highlands tend to space civs out more so you might try that.

 

[Vargas1]

This is a brutal start and the people telling you to “get good” are out of line. That being said, I have a hard time believing this is normal unless you’re adding more civs in the game setup. I avoid early war more often than not on deity and I don’t build very many military units. Also, maps like lakes and highlands tend to space civs out more so you might try that.

A lot of the reaction is because this is at least the second over-the-top complaining post that this individual has posted recently (and was very combative in the other post). And unless they’re using a mod for “worst start ever,” this is not 99% of spawns. So a little less hyperbole and a little more openness to actual feedback would go a long way.

As to the substance - for sure this is a tough start, but not a doomed one. As others have said, by turn 30 getting to archery would be very helpful. Also, exploring that far south while having neighbors close-by to either side is not a great idea.

As someone who has had very similar experiences, this looks like someone used to playing on emperor who jumps up to deity. If you have other civs nearby you simply can’t start with a scout to prance merrily about and/or send a warrior away exploring.

 

[greenOak]

A lot of the reaction is because this is at least the second over-the-top complaining post that this individual has posted recently (and was very combative in the other post). And unless they’re using a mod for “worst start ever,” this is not 99% of spawns. So a little less hyperbole and a little more openness to actual feedback would go a long way.

As to the substance - for sure this is a tough start, but not a doomed one. As others have said, by turn 30 getting to archery would be very helpful. Also, exploring that far south while having neighbors close-by to either side is not a great idea.

As someone who has had very similar experiences, this looks like someone used to playing on emperor who jumps up to deity. If you have other civs nearby you simply can’t start with a scout to prance merrily about and/or send a warrior away exploring.

The original post is definitely hyperbole with a whiny tone, but people acting like they would be have such an easy time of dealing with this are so far off the mark.

There's nothing wrong with sending a scout far away to explore. In fact, that's what you should be doing with them most of the time because most of their value comes from discovering city-states, other civs, goody huts, or natural wonders.

I agree that archery should be teched by now (especially with the tea tiles he could work), but implying that he just didn't build military units is totally untrue. From what we can tell, he didn't build a builder, settler, or monument. He's probably been producing military units from around turn 10 when he got swarmed. Keep in mind he says he lost two warriors and one slinger, which means he would have built at least one slinger and four warriors.

If you look at his city, it doesn't have good production. I don't see a single 2f/2p tile although admittedly I can't make out the tiles to the north of Aachen. This seems like a very plausible build order based on the information we have:

Scout -> Slinger -> Warrior -> Warrior -> Warrior -> Warrior

Hardly a greedy build order. Oh and for those commenting on why he only has one city, good luck building a settler if the AI starts marching warriors toward you on turn 10. Granted, this kind of game is the exception not the rule, but sometimes deity just throws this kind of ridiculousness at you.

 

[Casualty of war]

The killer is the siege, preventing your city from repairing. Try positioning your Warriors so the enemy can't get the surround, rotate badly injured ones into your capitol for the fresh one stationed there, resist the temptation to finish off an enemy if it will cost you your unit in return.

An alternative is bringing the second nation into the war with the first who declared on you.

This is a Tough Win situation, but probably not a No Win situation. Happy to plug 50 turns into the save to see if I can manage any better.

And I play Terra maps because I like having the other civs close by. That's Era Score, trading partners, a Defensive Tactics Inspiration and future members of my empire you're talking about.

Something else I thought about. Don't bother sending a delegation unless it will get you at least to -1 diplo modifiers. Someone who starts out -6 or worse is just going to be aggro to you no matter how much you sweettalk them. No point in buying them to -5, because they are still going to come try to eat your face.

Horseman rush is really unreliable on Deity now, because sometimes the AI gets Walls up in the 20s.

If someone's military strength starts dropping and they aren't at war with another civ then they have a serious Barb problem.

 

[Archon_Wing]

The original post is definitely hyperbole with a whiny tone, but people acting like they would be have such an easy time of dealing with this are so far off the mark.

Nobody said it'd be easy. The bigger issue is expecting to get Deity right away, and then posting a meme at t30 when this kind of stuff can happen much earlier. I gather that it might have started earlier, but there's zero context to the pic and little more than venting. What else can people say? The loss is because of losing units and bad tech choice-- it's not the start that killed OP. That could have happened on any map with a close neighbor.

See, this kind of stuff does happen to everyone. But does everyone start blaming the game and immediately start making threads about it?


There's nothing wrong with building a scout. The mistake is in not getting archery asap when you found people so close by. Why even bother building a scout when one isn't going to use the information anyways?

 

[Naeshar]

My starts with Frederick are always really bad as well. Something in the game prevents the civ from having even decent starting location. And I am not even playing deity.

 

[Enfant_Sauvage]

I agree on that point and difficulty is not the point of the problem. It is merely impossible to me to have a map playable when I try to. I mostly do the Game of the Month because I have the certitude the map will be playable. I don't know what they have changed in the game but the spawns are broken.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

This is just a pure exaggeration.
Starts where you get focused down by two immediate neighbours aren't that common on Deity (I'd actually say they are somewhat rare).

That being said, You had a somewhat open position (as in, no mountains covering one of your sides), and in that case you should in most cases go slinger first and tech for archery immediately, especially when it was clear that your neighbour spawned that close. After that its just a matter of using the terrain as cleverly as possible by fortifying warriors, and getting your first archer out as soon as possible.
The AI also works in the way that it will attack you mostly based on your relative army value, so if you held out early on in favour of not getting any military units (which I think is likely in this instance), they would probably declare on you because you were below their threshold of army value (usually at about 1/3 of army value or less, depending on leader).

That also being said, you can somewhat mitigate close spawns by taking a particular map size, and then manually removing leaders to make the map less dense.
Doesn't always work 100%, but it usually gives you a fair bit of room.

 

[tsf4]

The AI civs do spawn close a lot of times. It feels like they don’t want you to have any breathing room.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

The AI civs do spawn close a lot of times. It feels like they don’t want you to have any breathing room.

Which can actually be a good thing, if you go for a simple warrior rush (with archers as a follow-up) off of 2 cities.
It gives you more room in the long run, and the closer they are the more efficient it becomes.

Which is until the AI gets walls and classic era units, at that point you need to consolidate gains fast as you're not tearing down those walls.
Deity in civ 6 unfortunately has only a few viable openers at the moment, most of them involving hitting a power spike off of 2 cities.
It does get stale after a while, mostly because of how repetitive it is (even if it does work).

 

[auximenes77]

My starts with Frederick are always really bad as well. Something in the game prevents the civ from having even decent starting location. And I am not even playing deity.

I started a game last week as Germany and I am disappointed with the starting location as well. I didn't try any re-rolls so maybe it was just bad luck.

 

[HiRezAudio]

This is just a pure exaggeration.
Starts where you get focused down by two immediate neighbours aren't that common on Deity (I'd actually say they are somewhat rare).

Really? Not in my experience they aren't. I would say in 9/10 starts when I play on Deity mode I have a VERY near neighbour - and get attacked within the first era almost every time. Only yesterday I had 3 restarts in a row because I had one of the 'angry boys' within 7 tiles of my capital and they attacked right after I founded my second city, swarming me under. This is very, very common.

That being said, You had a somewhat open position (as in, no mountains covering one of your sides), and in that case you should in most cases go slinger first and tech for archery immediately, especially when it was clear that your neighbour spawned that close. After that its just a matter of using the terrain as cleverly as possible by fortifying warriors, and getting your first archer out as soon as possible.
The AI also works in the way that it will attack you mostly based on your relative army value, so if you held out early on in favour of not getting any military units (which I think is likely in this instance), they would probably declare on you because you were below their threshold of army value (usually at about 1/3 of army value or less, depending on leader).

That also being said, you can somewhat mitigate close spawns by taking a particular map size, and then manually removing leaders to make the map less dense.
Doesn't always work 100%, but it usually gives you a fair bit of room.

I know how to defend, but it's almost indefensible when you have enemies THAT close - may as well re-roll immediately at that point given the 80% boosts the AI gets as it can swarm you under even though it is not making good use of it's units.
Only defence I have ever found is to sink all early governor titles into Victor and even that has nasty side-effects.....

 

[Linklite]

I'm seeing the same problem here that I've been seeing elsewhere on this forum. That is, people essentially saying "Your start is fine, you just have to play in this super optimised way, and if you don't do it this way, you deserve to lose". If I wanted just one optimal way to play, I'd play pong. The point of Civ is to play in your own style. Even on the hardest difficulty, there should be room for different styles. Sure, some playstyles like OCC should be a virtual death sentence, but not all bar one or two.

This is something that I'd like the Devs to look into for Civ VII, if it's too late for Civ VI. I don't want to have to choose between having agency in playstyle at the beginning and having resistance to military from the middle onwards.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I'm seeing the same problem here that I've been seeing elsewhere on this forum. That is, people essentially saying "Your start is fine, you just have to play in this super optimised way, and if you don't do it this way, you deserve to lose". If I wanted just one optimal way to play, I'd play pong. The point of Civ is to play in your own style. Even on the hardest difficulty, there should be room for different styles. Sure, some playstyles like OCC should be a virtual death sentence, but not all bar one or two.

This is something that I'd like the Devs to look into for Civ VII, if it's too late for Civ VI. I don't want to have to choose between having agency in playstyle at the beginning and having resistance to military from the middle onwards.

That's unfortunately how it is in civ 6 deity.
I personally don't like it myself either, but if you intend to beat deity that's pretty much how you need to go about things.

The reason is that the AI quickly snowballs out of control in the classical era due to their inherent bonuses, where you have two options to pursue:
Either you take them out before the snowball really starts rolling (you rush him as efficiently as possible, which limits the consistently viable builds), or you set up for the long game where you plan to overtake them later on (you need plenty of room to settle and get infrastructure up asap, which also somewhat limits the amount of consistently viable builds).

As for the peaceful option you usually have a lot more leeway (even on deity), depending on the terrain, victory condition and your neighbours.
For the aggressive option, you really can't be flexible unfortunately.
The reason is that you need to either kill him (or be able to hold at least 1 city or more in a peace deal) in order to set yourself up for later on.
The main reason for this inflexibility in regards to aggressive options, is that city defenses (walls and automatic combat strength increase upon fielding higher tech units) in this game are way too overtuned at the moment, which severely limits your window of opportunity in time for said aggression.
The AI nearly always builds walls early now, and is generally capable of fielding their first horseman/swordsman pretty early, and once that happens you are not taking out those cities anymore with your warriors and archers.
Which can of course be a major issue, since if you are rather locked in in regards to settling space, you might find yourself locked down to just a couple of handful of cities, at which point it is often game over.
And in the meantime, the AI will just snowball further out of control while you lag severely behind.

Again, I really don't like it either, but that's unfortunately how it is due to city defenses these days.
Personally I think walls being overtuned is the biggest issue atm for the replay value of higher difficulty play in civ 6, as I can somewhat manage to take down a 35 combat strength capital with warriors. With walls though, that's just a death march. (And no, you can't just get a battering ram to "fix" that, since by the time you get it your units are even more obsolete and they usually have crossbowmen fielded)

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Really? Not in my experience they aren't. I would say in 9/10 starts when I play on Deity mode I have a VERY near neighbour - and get attacked within the first era almost every time. Only yesterday I had 3 restarts in a row because I had one of the 'angry boys' within 7 tiles of my capital and they attacked right after I founded my second city, swarming me under. This is very, very common.



I know how to defend, but it's almost indefensible when you have enemies THAT close - may as well re-roll immediately at that point given the 80% boosts the AI gets as it can swarm you under even though it is not making good use of it's units.
Only defence I have ever found is to sink all early governor titles into Victor and even that has nasty side-effects.....

The first part - it happens, but not 9/10 times.
Most times I can manage when it happens, but sometimes the game is lost from turn 1, and that's a restart.
Nothing you can really do about it, but fortunately it doesn't happen nearly 9/10 times like you claim.

For the second part - knowing how to defend is tactical knowledge.
On deity, you also need to have the strategic knowledge (as in, knowing when to have the war and on what terms, and how to prepare for it with a decent build order).
You generally don't need Victor for that, but you especially need to refine your build/tech order.
What I can see from your footage is that you most likely went scout first, which was a bad choice for this particular start since you had an open terrain start (as in, no mountains/water shielding parts of your city), which means you need to go slinger first in order to bolster your future defenses.
With that slinger, you should look at an opportunity to get the archery boost, as well as teching straight to it.
As you said you sent a delegation which is good, but you also need to watch for their army value.
The AI starts at 100 (but usually quickly loses a few), and you can only afford to have a single warrior for the time being if the AI does not build more units (at which point they go above 100), is far away or is not of the aggressive type.
Usually you want to sit at about 1/3 of that value or more, at which point you need at least 2 warriors in total (along with your slinger) to start pushing 50.
I dunno if you already had Craftsmanship at that point (it seems not), but you need to take it over Foreign Trade in order to get +50% warrior/archer production going.
Foreign Trade is only a good option if you happen to be relatively isolated.

Take these pointers as you want, but at least you got them now.

 

[greenOak]

I'm seeing the same problem here that I've been seeing elsewhere on this forum. That is, people essentially saying "Your start is fine, you just have to play in this super optimised way, and if you don't do it this way, you deserve to lose". If I wanted just one optimal way to play, I'd play pong. The point of Civ is to play in your own style. Even on the hardest difficulty, there should be room for different styles. Sure, some playstyles like OCC should be a virtual death sentence, but not all bar one or two.

This is something that I'd like the Devs to look into for Civ VII, if it's too late for Civ VI. I don't want to have to choose between having agency in playstyle at the beginning and having resistance to military from the middle onwards.

This is not even close to true. You may have to accept that every once in a while (no more than 10%) you'll get a game over, but pretty much every opening is viable on deity. You could literally pick your first three builds at random and still be able to comfortably win any victory condition.