A few questions and some comments

[lances]

I recently started playing Diety, after beating Emperor consistently. I typically (ok, always) play the Chinese and restart if I don't like my capital's location.

I was really surprised at the advice to build granaries - I don't think I've ever built a granary until the industrial age. They just take too long, and cost too much, and keeping my city sizes low enough is a constrant struggle anyway. Are there Diety/Emperor players who are building early granaries?

My build order on a typical capital is Warrior/Warrior/Warrior/Warrior/Settler. That way I get the Settler just as the city hits size three. If I'm getting extra food, I'll build the settler earlier of course. I play pangea maps size standard or small, and I focus on trying to surround my capital with cities as quickly as possible. I've found that any city beyond the first ring of cities is going to nearly completely corrupted anyway, so that first ring up quickly is extraordinarily important. I try to squeeze in six or eight cities without going outside that first ring. This requires some overlap. After that I look for luxuries and resources.

The problem with this strategy is any little thing goes wrong and I'm busted. An AI builds into my capital area, an early attack (rare-I always give into threats), or an ugly map and I have to start over. When I get my Riders, I attack, take the GA, and keep going until I get a leader. With the leader I make a FP and then I have a second ring. At Diety, I find myself attacking Riflemen with my Riders, which seemed impossible at first, but surprisingly, if you have enough of them it works. If I can get this far, I think I'm good for the duration, and I have won Diety with this strategy, but I'm looking for hints and help.

Some questions - how does reputation play out in game terms in the game? I find that early on the AI's will make good deals for my extra luxuries, but later they won't give me crap for them. Am I doing something to hurt my rep I'm not aware of?

Is there a way to increase the number of leaders? I'm lucky to get one - and sometimes have to struggle for that, and rarely get two or more. I do always build barracks, and "save" my elites for easy attacks, whenever possible.

Wonders - I've given up on building wonders. The first wonder I'll actually build (after FP) is Hoover's Dam. Then UN. Sometimes I'll grab Women's Suffrage, if I can. I can't see beating the AI at Diety or even Emperor level without factories or a leader. Anybody have any ideas about this?

Thanks,
lances.

 

[DaveMcW]

Sounds like you're most things right. Diety is not easy, you won't get early wonders unless you capture them. You can increase your number of elites by being militaristic, but only the Heroic Epic helps for a leader.

After you break your first per-turn trade deal no one will let you buy things on credit anymore. Ways to break a deal include breaking the trade route, declaring war, losing the resource, or having your partner die.

Granaries double your pop growth, which is usually the limiting factor in settler production. Having a granary and bonus food creates a special situation called a "settler pump". Use the luxury slider to keep your large early cities under control.

 

[DaveMcW]

Also, you seem to be a "builder" until you get Chivalry. Try doing a 10-swordman rush (prebuild with warriors). That will allow you to defend your capitol ring and extort the techs you need faster.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Read some of the RBE succession games. They have one game now where they are playing a 'beyond deity' level game, where they give the AI a cost factor of 5 (vs. the normal 6). So the AI grows and builds stuff 10% faster than the normal deity level.

You can read how their game is progressing and download some of their saved games to look how they micromanaged their cities and what build order they used for them. Whether or not a granary is needed (and when to build one) depends on terrain and how much room you have to expand. The larger the map, the more helpful a granary will be in a city that will be a settler/worker factory. If you are only going to have room for 4-5 cities, then building a granary before your first settler probably won't help you much and it would be better to get the first settler out faster to claim resources before the AI does.

I've just recently been experimenting with granaries myself. If you are only producing 1 or 2 shields at size 1, yes it seems to take forever. I think getting your first settler out before the granary may be better in some cases, so it gives your worker time to catch up on tile improvements for your capital. So it doesn't take as long to build the granary, and your second city gets up and running earlier to produce military and extra workers to keep up with the future cities.

 

[Tassadar]

My way to increase great leader apperance is by using barbarian farm. When i am in war, i will raze most of their city and it create space where barbarian will appear, let your veteran units fight them and get promote to elite, then send those elites units in battle against a.i.

When i do this with panzer and railroad it is easy, because you can attack twice with same units and for sure it will become elite.


I always like an early granery ( regent to emperor level, i dont like deity style of playing ) in my capital, it doesnt take that long to built if you mine bonus grassland and cut a forest, then your city has double growth, use lux slider if necesary but dont create entertainer like a.i. do. Crank out settler after settler while in the mean time your second city crank soldier. i am always able to grab a lots of land by using this.

 

[Yndy]

I begun building granaries also after receiving advice on CFC and most of the time they are useful. I think you can study an article by cracker about early moves (under strategy articles). You can see there why and when you should build a granary before the first settler, after the first settler or not at all. This is about the granary in your capital.

Ussually it is useful to have a settler/worker factory in the town with best growth capability. There you should have a granary built even if you pop-rush it.

Leaders are about luck adn syle of play. Building the Heroic Epic also helps. My personal average is 2 leaders before tanks kick in. Other people have a lot more as they fight a lot more.

 

[Tassadar]

I forgot something, there is an non-obvious adventage to built an early granerry, you will get more chance of getting a free settler from a goody hut if you make your move correctly.

There is some rule to meet to get a free settler, like having less city than a.i. and you dont have a settler under production, so let the a.i. built their second city ( or third) while you built your granery, and a few turn before it is ready, then open up goody hut with your warrior, if play correclty ( with some experience and luck) you will succeed. If so, then you got the adventage of granery and you catch up very fast because of this free settler.

 

[anarres]

I nearly always build a granary in my capitol. If the food there is lame I build a settler and then a granary in the 2nd city. The city with the granary just churns settlers/workers.

The short term loss is easily outweighed by the long term gain. The only exception I find is on smaller maps with full number of civs - the close starting position can sometimes mean that the land dissapears before you can occupy it.

I don't tend to build graneries in my other cities until size 7, but this varies depending on the terrain (and a million other things).

You mentioned it being a problem keeping cities small? This should only ever be an issue if you have only grassland around you (always +2 food). Once my cities are the required size (normally size 6, but bigger if on river), you select the worked squares to have +0 food, so I don't understand this problem.

A note on city placement - IMHO, you should not place cities in a ring around your capitol, you should place them where they are best suited. This depends on many things: tiles; location of other civs; distance to other civs; map size; luxuries; resources; costal cities (important to have 1 or 2 if you can). The decision to stick to a rigid 'ring' layout will be costing you early on, when you can least afford it.

In lots of games I 'splurge' in a direction to get to horses or iron. I won't just send a lonly settler out there as it will get stomped on. You need to push your whole empire that way to support it. This said, every game is different, and I would never say 'always splurge for a resource', as it isn't always appropriate.

Also, don't give up on early wonders. It is nearly always possible to get at leat 1 of the ancient wonders if you really want it. You do however (generally) need to start it as early as you can. I often get the GLighthouse on archipellago maps, or the GLibrary if I am behind in techs (not very often). Remember - you should decide which one you want, research the tech first (or buy it the first round someone else gets it), and you should work out which city you are building it in and pre-build if you can. Even without pre-builds it should be possible to get most wonders.

Luxuries: The only factors in what the AI is prepared to pay for a lux are:
(1) The relative power of the civ (or it may be # of cities, or something like this)
(2) How much money they have, including gold-per-turn
the reason that you are being offered less is probably down to factor (2), as they tend to get more powerful as the game goes on.

DaveMcW is right in that they will not give you credit if you upset them, but a luxury is on a per-turn basis so if you have upset them they only trust you enough to give you a gold-per-turn deal in response. If you are being offered (say) 10 gold for a luxury it is because that is the max-per-turn they would give you, but they don't have any per turn to spare. If you hadn't upset them they would offer you around 200gold (20x10) if they had it.