A Legends of Revolution (LOR) guide to Deity Victory

[JaredPWagner]

This is a guide for the critical first 5000 years 4000BC to 1000 AD. This is the hardest period in the game and the point where most deity games are typically lost.

The challenge: Deity is a huge step up from emperor. On deity all AI civs start with the following: 2 Settlers, 1 Worker, 2 Scouts, 4 Archers, 4 free techs (The Wheel, Agriculture, Hunting, Archery) + their normal civilization techs if they are different then the free ones.
In addition the AI has a 40% production advantage. City growth takes 40% less food, buildings take 40% less hammers and so on. Finally the barbarians are set to raging. This does not hurt the AI civs as they have a default advantage vs barbarians, but makes the early game much harder for the human player.

The effect: The result of all of these challenges is an extremely difficult start. All of the AI advantages except the base 40% production advantage are one time early bonuses. Collectively they act to shut the player down early. Often a deity game never reaches the mid game. On the flip side, however, if you can survive the start, the relative advantage of AI is just 40% which is easier to deal with.

Games settings:
Difficulty -> Deity
Size -> Large
Speed -> Marathon
Legends of Revolutions settings -> Default
(Turn 0 save file attached)

I played this game with the Legends of Revolution mod. There are a few but not many areas where this changes how one would play in standard BTS. I’ll point these out as they come up.
Forum and Download Information for Legends of Revolutions MOD can be found here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=359

Marathon: Marathon slows the game down dramatically. It gives you more turns and thus more time to try to overcome the huge initial AI advantage. It is therefore slightly easier than a fast game would be. Marathon, however, is not for people looking to finish their games in a single sitting. I started my game on January 3rd, played off and on in my free time until finally winning on January 23rd.

This guide is going to be a walkthrough of the first 5000 years. 4000 B.C. to 1000 A.D. This period is by far the most difficult.

The initial 4000 BC save file for this game can be downloaded from the following address:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=280217&d=1295919256

 

[JaredPWagner]

The Start:

My first city Timbuktu. Initial placement is critical. Whenever possible you want your cities in hills for the defensive bonus. Hills with planes best because they give you 2 hammers instead of one in your initial city. Rivers are phenomenally powerful providing +2 health early on, a huge production bonus from levee in the midgame, and another production bonus from hydro plant in the late game. This start looks pretty good. I am on a planes hill for the extra production, I have river access. I have gold and stone in my initial cross and two food resources. I also have a fair amount of forest for chopping.

 

[JaredPWagner]

Initial Moves and a bit of Luck:

As the Mali I start with Mining and the Wheel. The first thing I build in my city is a Worker. My first research goal is Bronze working so I can chop trees. While waiting for bronze working I’ll put a mine on the pigs, and then mine the gold.

My initial warrior popped two huts before he got mauled by a bear. Got hunting from the first and 168 gold from the second. Shortly after my poor warriors death I got the health test event when my capital was still size 1. Put together this makes for a very nice start.

Since I got hunting I’ll build two scouts. It’s critical to find optimal spots for cities 2 and 3. Had I not gotten hunting I would have used warriors instead. There is no need for city defenders yet. Barbarians won’t enter cultural borders until 2600 B.C at the earliest.

 

[JaredPWagner]

Expansion Site Identified:

I found a spot for my second city. It has lots of flood plains and two rivers. It’s the perfect spot for my commerce center (I’ll explain what I mean by this in a bit). As a general rule when building cities I grab the land further from my capital first. The AI will seldom build a city right next to your capital unless all other land is taken. It’s the spots that are farther away that they go for. In this game the Babylonian civilization is close. You can just make out their purple border near my scout. My goal is to wall them off and keep them away from the more southern lands.

 

[JaredPWagner]

Barbarian Cities You Don’t Want Them:

Barbarian Cities are a pain in vanilla BTS. In the Legends of Revolutions MOD they are death. If left unmolested they quickly turn into new civilizations. These new civilizations form with huge armies and declare war on their nearest neighbor. To win we need to prevent barbarian cities from forming near Timbuktu.

Barbarians like resources they will not form on land without resources unless there is no better land anywhere on the map. Also barbarian cities cannot form inside the 3X3 visibility square created a military unit. There are three high risk spawn points near my capital so I placed warriors to block barbarian cities from spawning in these locations.

 

[JaredPWagner]

The Hordes at the Gates:

Sometime between BC 2500 and BC 2100 massive hordes of barbarians will attack your cities. These represent your biggest early game challenge because they like to pillage city improvements. Since they pillage they need to be eliminated in the field outside of city walls. The majority of these barbarians are archers (3 strength, 1-2 first strikes). To eliminate massive numbers of them with minimal losses we need a unit with strength 4. There are only three ways to efficiently get one.

1) Pray for copper in your initial city cross and build axemen. In LOR axemen are only a 4 strength unit not 5, but they are good enough. With 2 strength promotions and an anti archer promotion. They have win % in the mid 90s. On Deity all of your initial units will quickly have 10xp from constant barbarian battles so the promotions will come quickly.

2) Play the Mali. In LOR their unique unit is the skirmisher an archer with 4 strength. They have the advantage of being good city defenders too.

3) Play the Inca. Their warrior the Quechua has a +100% bonus against archers. However, with the Inca you must also either build archers as well or get copper very quickly because the barbarians spawn the occasional axemen.

I chose to play the Mali which is fortunate as I did not get copper in my initial city cross. I would have lost the game at this point had I been playing a different civilization.

Unfortunately the empire of Babylon built their 6th city right where I wanted to build my third, but that’s deity for you. Also the city of Djenne is growing restless. They are not connected to my capital, and they are unhealthy. They will soon revolt (A LOR feature). I buy time by bribing the city officials with a lavish gift of 88gp (5 turns of research lost) but that will only get me a few turns. Something drastic must be done or my empire will descend into civil war.

 

[JaredPWagner]

Rebellion and Revolt:

Djenne has had its first revolt. It’s a small one but trouble is in the air. I have almost finished the pyramids by clear cutting the last of my forest. Switching from despotism to representation will give me the stability I need.

 

[JaredPWagner]

Reload Reload:

The Legends of Revolutions screen of death. If you ever get this screen its pretty much game over. I thought I could get by without bribing Djenne a second time because the pyramids were almost done. Game ending mistake. Refusing this request for independence created a permanent 2 unhappiness in two of my starting cities. At this stage of the game that’s devastating. I reloaded and paid the city its bribe. Once the pyramids came online this problem went away. Representation has a huge stability bonus over despotism.

 

[JaredPWagner]

Neighbor Unrest:

By 1350 BC I have finished the land grab. It’s now time to rebuild my economy. The rapid expansion required on Deity has ruined my finances. My research rate is down to 30%. Unrest is tied very closely to financial health in LOR. If I had not built the pyramids I would never be able to survive with expenses this high. With despotism you pretty much have to keep your research rate at 60% or higher or your cities will revolt. I’ll research pottery next and stop building new cities.

My neighbor the Babylonian empire is starting to suffer stability issues. One of their cities broke off and formed the city state of Persia. The city of Borsippa also has a rebel movement. This is good as it will keep them busy and provide weaker enemies for them to fight then me.

Tech Order:It’s worth taking a moment to describe my tech order and trades for the first 5000 years of the game.

From 4000BC to 1000AD I researched the following in order: Bronze Working (for forest chopping): Hunting (Got from Hut): Archery: Masonry (For Pyramids): Animal Husbandry: Mysticism: Agriculture: Pottery: Iron Working (If you don’t get a source of Iron you will lose): Metal Casting: Mathematics: Currency: Construction: Engineering: Literature: Feudalism: Guilds.

Picking a civ that starts with mining is a big help in the land grab. On marathon it takes about thirty turns to research mining. This is basically thirty turns of not chopping forest. It takes 20 turns for a worker to chop enough forest to make a second worker. Two workers can chop 40% of a settler in 10 turns. Not starting with mining slows you down significantly in those critical early turns of the land grab.

 

[JaredPWagner]

War for Iron:

When I researched iron working I knew I had a problem. There was no iron in my empire. LOR lets you build swordsmen without iron, but after that you are locked out of the high end military units. I needed iron fast or it was game over.

Warwick to the north had the nearest source of iron. It was right next to my capital and far from Chinese reinforcement. I threw everything I had at it. No choice really it was conquer the city or lose the game.

Once you capture an enemy city the AI is usually willing to negotiate. As the Chinese military was much stronger than mine I quickly made peace. The conflict was enough to get me my first great general. I had him settle in my capital.

To win on deity it helps to build a military center. This is a production city capable of pumping out highly experienced units. You will want this city to have the following improvements: 5 settled great generals, Military Academy, West Point, Heroic Epic. This combination will let you build new ground units starting with 17 experience points = 4 promotions. It will also give you +150% military unit production. 4 starting promotions is important because it unlocks two key promotions commando and ace. If you are playing a leader with the charismatic trait you only need 13 experience points to get 4 promotions and thus only need to settle 3 great generals. In my opinion this makes Charisma far and away the best leader trait.

Ace sucks in vanilla BTS, but in LOR it is very powerful. The ability to build air units that start with Ace allows you to dominate the sky. More important however is commando. The improved AI is very good at city defense. If you approach a city in the typical manner with a stack of doom it will reinforce that city making it very difficult to take. The AI does not know how to deal with an attacking stack with the commando promotion however. It builds too many roads and spreads its units too thin trying to defend every place the stack could possibly go.

Attaching a great general to a military leader should not normally be done with one exception. Once your military center is up and producing level 4 units It is worthwhile to make a great medic. Medic 3 is a great promotion and allows you to maintain offensive momentum. In LOR the best unit to make into a great medic is a special forces unit as they start with the commando promotion.

To get 5 great generals you pretty much need to have constant wars. On Deity for the most part these wars will come to you but it is critical to avoid a war that will significantly hurt you. The key is to have wars with foes that don’t represent significant military threats. Rebel break away regions of distant empires are perfect. The huge diplomacy benefits you get with their much stronger parent cultures will prevent wars that can hurt you.

 

[JaredPWagner]

Commerce Center:

Djenne will be my commerce center city. It is the second most important city other then my military center city. A commerce center city should have the following properties. 1) lots of unusable terrain for cottages, 2) lots of food, 3) lots of rivers for the extra commerce and later for levee hammers. A bit of production is nice but not required. If needed you can always settle a great engineer there to give the city a boost. Djenne is a near perfect commerce center which is why I grabbed it as my second city despite it having limited value in the early game.

To build a commerce center you need to build the following national wonders in it: Oxford University, Wall Street, Found a food producing corporation for domestic spread only, Found a culture/gold/or hammer corporation for foreign spread.

The food producing corporations are the best for pure domestic use. They will allow you boost cities lacking adequate food (like my capital Timbuktu) to their full potential. Not spreading them to foreign lands will let you buy/trade for the resources they use and get them cheep. Culture, gold, and hammer producing corporations have their uses but are not nearly as good. One of these corporations is ideal for foreign spread to rake in the gold.

Once Wall Street and Oxford University are up you can consider moving your capital to your commerce center. This will enable you to run Bureaucracy for far longer then you normally would. In a solid commerce city like Djenne Bureaucracy produced about the same research/gold as free speech in a mature empire of 16 cities.

Defensive Stack of Doom:
The commerce center is the weak underbelly of your civilization. Mines are easily replaced. Towns not so much. To defend it you must station your stack of doom nearby as I have done in the picture above. Also make liberal use of the catapult (arguably the most powerful unit for its cost in the game).

Base BTS catapults and LOR catapults are slightly different. In base BTS they have a max attack damage of 75% with a max collateral damage of 50%. In LOR they have a max attack damage of 40% with a max collateral damage of 30%. While base BTS catapults sound far stronger, the reality is that LOR catapults are better. Once siege units reach their max damage they withdraw from the fight. This means that LOR catapults only have to damage their opponent 40% and they will live to fight another day. BTS catapults have to damage their opponents by 75% to survive a fight. Usually you don’t have enough catapults to cause more than 30% collateral anyways so the increased durability of LOR catapults makes them superior.

Catapults make a critical part of the defensive stack of doom. Catapults plus a stack of swordsmen or horsemen can destroy equal sized attacking stacks with minimal losses as long as you lead with the catapults. My defensive stack of doom can be seen in the photo above.

 

[JaredPWagner]

1000 AD: The Worst is Over

If you have survived and have solid city placement by 1000 AD the game gets much easier. From then on out it’s just a matter of overcoming the AI’s 40% production advantage.
Above is a picture of my republic around 1000 AD. My military is weak as Timbuktu was tied up for a while producing heroic epic, but I am the first to guilds and early knights will be enough to keep me safe. The computer likes to fill in each tier of research before moving on to the next. To survive as the leader of the dull people with your 40% tech disadvantage you are usually better off pushing deep into a single line and then trading to backfill desired techs.

By 1000 AD: I had received the following techs through trade: Sailing, Writing, Alphabet, Meditation, Polytheism, Seafaring, Monotheism, Priesthood, Monarchy, Aesthetics, Compass, Calendar, Horseback Riding.

To make so many trades it is critical to maintain good relations with the majority of the AI. This can be tricky in an era of constant warfare. There is no one right way to manage diplomacy but I usually do the following.

1) Always have open borders with everyone, but whenever there is a war between two AI immediately cancel open borders with both. You will still get hit with the “you refused to help us during wartime message penalty, but at least you will avoid “you refused to stop trading with our worst enemy”. Restore open borders as soon as the war ends.

2) If you have a critical resource trade with an AI that goes to war ignore (1) above and keep open borders with both.

3) If an AI goes to war against a significantly weaker opponent and asks you to join the war do it. The weaker opponent is not a threat. Especially when he has to worry about his much more powerful opponent.

The game is far from over at 1000 AD but the hardest part is.
From here I go on to win a space race victory in 2037.

Comparison of Legends of Revolution to base BTS with better AI:
Legends of Revolution has much better balance and is overall more fun. It is also slightly easier then base BTS with better AI for the following reasons.

1) The parts of Legends of Revolution that are harder then BTS can be countered. Civ instability can be countered by early pyramids, and barbarian cities which are deadly in LOR can be prevented from spawning by fogbusters.

2) Once pyramids are up instability hurts the AI more than the player. The breaking away of rebel cities slows the AI down, which helps the human player catch up.

3) The multiple small civs formed in LOR through revolution and barbarian civ spawning create lots of weak civilizations. These give aggressive civilizations more attractive targets to conquer then you.

4) A few default features Ranged Bombard and Tech diffusion help the human player more then the AI. I did not talk about these in the guide above because they are minor features but they should be turned off by anyone seeking the most challenging LOR experience.

That said slightly easier does not mean worse. LOR has much better game balance. I can’t go back to vanilla BTS now that I have gotten used to it. LOR just makes for a better game.

 

[phungus420]

Thanks for the read. Wasn't sure it was possible to beat a BetterAI using mod on diety. Well done!

 

[Kvess]

Really interesting read. I usually play on Monarch myself, though I have been considering going up one step lately.

A few questions:
* I notice that in the last screenshot that the power ratio between the chinese and you are 1:0.3 - that doesn't seem very safe. I was under the impression that anything below 0.5 is an invasion that just hasn't happened yet. Is this different in LOR?
* Are you sure cancelling open borders with large warring civs helps? I've always believed that the logic goes something like: "AI A (in war with AI B) decides to contact you. -> If you have open borders with B, ask to cancel deals. If not, ask to declare war." For cancelling borders to help, cancelling deals and helping in war needs to be separate checks with their own odds of occuring.
* Are there any other world wonders you consider worth pursuing?

 

[JaredPWagner]

* I notice that in the last screenshot that the power ratio between the chinese and you are 1:0.3 - that doesn't seem very safe. I was under the impression that anything below 0.5 is an invasion that just hasn't happened yet. Is this different in LOR?

Its not different in LOR, at the time the Chinees were in a war with the Spanish. When the AI has another war going on you are likley to be ok. However, there is no doubt that I was quite weak at that stage of the game. I was the first to knights but had not had a chance to build them yet. If you notice in the screen shot I was trying to build them mainly my capital as I had both a settled great general and heroic epic there so construction was efficient. In a pinch, however, I would have set my research rate to zero and upgraded my horsemen to knights. That fortunatally was not needed and that power ratio changed very quickly once I had a few knights out.

* Are you sure cancelling open borders with large warring civs helps? I've always believed that the logic goes something like: "AI A (in war with AI B) decides to contact you. -> If you have open borders with B, ask to cancel deals. If not, ask to declare war." For cancelling borders to help, cancelling deals and helping in war needs to be separate checks with their own odds of occuring.

Not sure. My understanding was that they were seperate checks but I have never tested it.

* Are there any other world wonders you consider worth pursuing?

Trafalagar square (new LOR wonder) is very powerful and should pretty much always be built.

The rest are good but not gamechangers.
The ones I almost always try to build if I can are:
Notre Dame (built in above game)
Great Libary (AI got it in above game)

Most of the rest are nice if you don't have a critical need to build something else
but are things to pick up only you happen to have the opportunity.

 

[JaredPWagner]

* Are you sure cancelling open borders with large warring civs helps? I've always believed that the logic goes something like: "AI A (in war with AI B) decides to contact you. -> If you have open borders with B, ask to cancel deals. If not, ask to declare war." For cancelling borders to help, cancelling deals and helping in war needs to be separate checks with their own odds of occuring.

On testing it with my latest game it appears that these are separate checks. I got both the refuse to cancel deals penalty followed by the refused to help with wartime penality back to back. So I stand by my recommendation to cancel open borders with large warring civs.