Any tips for appoaching Deity?

[Pengu]

Be prepared to micro a ton.
Every turn will be slow.
Harder to do any war without siege.
Improve your late game as games go on into late game more often.
Kiss AI butt more frequently.
Learn all the bulbing paths like the back of your hand.
Be better at bulbing.
Think more short term

In general it's a pain in the butt as the games are sooo slow and small mistakes can ruin you.

 

[Fippy]

Actually lots of micro is no hard requirement for deity,
if it's not your favorite waste of time you can get by with good overall plans.
Pain depends on if you want the challenge or not
Starting on deity and then wondering why you can actually lose makes little sense, it's why some pick it after all.

 

[krikav]

I play deity mainly because I like the fact that it's quite possible to lose.

 

[rah]

I've lost on IMM so that's good enough for me.

 

[Gumbolt]

I remember losing by AP one time on immortal. I had not been paying attention to it. This was years ago. Always war games are very loseable. It's teching versus trying to cripple 3-4 AI. Very difficult at times. As always it depends on a strong start.

 

[krikav]

1AD

Spoiler :

It wasn't obvious to me at first, but this is a very nice map.
Capital is absolutely insane and I also support the idea of going a quick granary+lighthouse there.
I think it's important to squeeze in a helper city to help hold the clams when the whipping anger is too large though.

Had I rolled a similar map myself I would have gone for GLH very early, that would have been absolutely brutal here.

I went alfa very early in my playthrough (T57) and traded for agri+AH, then math T67, and currency T76 bulbed philo T83 and got CS T98.
Culture-flipped the barb city with the aid of some caste artists.
I went into HR+Caste too early, should have remained there to do some more whipping (to spread tao easier and to build cothons which I didn't think about, but they very nice.

I was waiting a long time to get health resources in trades, but it doesn't look like they have any surpluses, should perhaps have paid more attention to access to freshwater and less brutal chopping. (Most forests went into chopping more workers.

Farmed everything and in the process of cottaging it now as cities are almost at health-cap.

 

[gavenkoa]

@sampsa 's stats (T115, 1AD, I added Great Spies via WB to compare with all AIs):

Latest mine (T66, also added GS to reveal all AIs):

@krikav save requires Buffy mod that I haven't so I can't compare.

Ours is Orange (easy guess by Power which is weighted sum of units).

You can laugh but I can't match Food growth...

Initially I had (T110, BC-0125):

At least I've learned to build cottages and stay with smaller city number

 

[earthy]

I've lost on IMM so that's good enough for me.

I lose on immortal all the time, usually to bullfeathers odds. You have 25 cuir at a good date, but hurr durr a dice roll means 5 are going to die to a single long bow on a hill before it takes damage. Or maybe you just lose every 70% fight all game(just happened to me right now )

 

[krikav]

@gavenkoa
You should get buffy, it's really nice to have help with workers no finishing all chops.
Screenshots of the graphs.

Spoiler :

@earthy
That happends to me frequently too. And thats a big contributing reason I'm such a big fan of cannons.
But with cuirs one can try to be patient too, (very difficult since one has oftentimes whipped the empire to the ground and the only thing one has going is a standing army.).
But being patient and just riding around in the AIs territory, pillaging to pay bills and waiting for openings (weak cities) or just units moving out of their cities can work oftentimes.

 

[gavenkoa]

You should get buffy, it's really nice to have help with workers no finishing all chops.

I'm using BULL_1.2.zip for that. It is smaller (3.3MB) and it is possible to install it unintrusively. As I understand it lacks graphic enhancement of Buffy.

Originally I used it as separate mod but that made my / others saves incompatible. So I copied Assets into "My Games/Beyond The Sword/CustomAssets" and replaced CvGameCoreDLL.dll in installation folder.

That allows me to load others original saves and having fun interface in game.

There are some difference between DLLs and original rules (like really working Coin overflow when whip extra overflow occurs, original game DLL throw that away).

I am afraid if changes are too dramatic, making our game experience incompatible... What if my play is good but DLL makes some extra favor for AI?

 

[gavenkoa]

@krikav Your food management is also incredible ))

It's definitely my problem and one that is serious.

I went into HR+Caste too early

Caste System in 1AD? Isn't it permanently? Isn't that only for temporarily Great Person farming?

Leader isn't PHI, I wonder if GP pays for itself.... Can you explain reasoning and expectations behind?

Farmed everything and in the process of cottaging it now as cities are almost at health-cap.

So you went into Farms and then is going to replace them with Cottages?

Actually I see city specialization - early cities with developed Cottages, later are all farmed... Have you used Farms for Granary/Obelisk/Library whip and after that done there is no need for them?

should perhaps have paid more attention to access to freshwater and less brutal chopping

This particular map doesn't have developed rivers to blame yourself...

On other hand Forest could be preserved (trying to optimize overlapping among cities).

 

[gavenkoa]

@krikav

You made 15 Workers! You must have lost 5-7Gpt for having that much units...

Another interesting thing: I tried to build Archers only, not Warriors. To defend against Barbarians. But actually I need a few Archers only in the frontier. I can save Hammers using Warriors for inner cities!

 

[krikav]

I went for warriors, area was pretty small and somewhat easy to spawnbust, had a barb city spawn really early and that seems to calm them down.
Still I had to 1pop a extra warrior in second city to defend early on. Barb managment could absolutely been better.

I went into caste+HR around T80, that was abit premature but not much. By the time you have a library in capital and in my case a monastery and granaries/lighthouses in cities that lack forests to chop them later on, slavery isn't superior. There is no more crucial things to whip.
Ofcourse you can whip libraries/courthouses etc etc, but likely better to just stay at happy (or healthcap in this case).
Caste is nice for borderpops and it's nice for managing food surplus very easy.

The 15 workers and the farms first and then cottages go hand in hand.
Usually it's not possible to get such a large number of workers easily, but here whipping in capital+second city was too good early on, and there was so many forests to chop later on, so I think it made sense.

With a worker army, you can afford to do that optimization of first farming to speed up the time it takes for cities to grow to happy/health-cap and only then replace everything with cottages.
Ideally one should have 3 turns put into every farm to replace them with cottages instantly.
Paying 6gpt in unit upkeep at 1AD.

 

[gavenkoa]

Caste is nice for borderpops and it's nice for managing food surplus very easy.

You mean https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Artist_(Civ4) with +4 pt ? To get over 10points you need 3T. It is game changing...

I think that working on Specialists without spawning Great Person is highly inefficient... It looks like you need to control that each city eventually spends all GP points before switching Food to something else.

There is no sense to work on Specialists near the end of game... Right?

 

[Anysense]

Representation makes specialists good even if you don't get a GP. Mature cottages and workshops with +100% are better, but it takes time for cottages to grow and forge+factory+power cost a ton of hammers and need time to payback. On the other hand, specialists can be hired whenever you want them. They are particularly useful when you have strong Sushi.

 

[krikav]

@gavenkoa
Yes, it makes little sense to work a non-rep specialist in a small food-deprived city that will never spawn a GPerson.
It's roughly equivalent of working a desert hill.

 

[sampsa]

@krikav Damn, that's a nice position! I think the helper city on the horse and skipping archery makes a big difference. Also, your dealing with the barb city was highly efficient while I had to get barracks+3sw+cat=220. Well, at least I unlocked HE.

 

[gavenkoa]

So I made good progress applying tips. Especially important was copying city layout from krikav and sampsa.

* I stopped to whip cities to the 1Citizen so they stayed productive even with whip (to keep commerce and for faster population regrowth, like after whip all best tiles are still working).
* I switched to Caste System and got Great Merchant

Unfortunately I've lost Liberalism race. I applied Great Scientist for Education, but I haven't had Philosophy and IA wouldn't trade it to the end... Having less cities AI teched like crazy for Liberalism. I have only one explanation - it was in Golden age + help of some Wonders...

I had a feeling that Deity has extreme city maintenance cost. Information on

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ4)
http://modiki.civfanatics.com/index.php?title=Civ4HandicapInfo

doesn't support my feeling... It only shows that AI has better bonuses (most costs reduced from 80% => 60% between IMM/Deity).

The only significant difference I found was increase in iMaxNumCitiesMaintenance 7 => 8.

It is crazy hard to make sense from

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-curious-cat-city-upkeep-explained.138473
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civic-upkeep-explained.148840/

I wonder if there is mod that helps to plan how maintenance cost increase with new city?

 

[Excal]

helps to plan how maintenance cost increase

FWIW

when captured AI cities I find they often build courthouse for you
if not then when in slavery can often whip courthouse when captured AI is too and coming out of revolt

 

[krikav]

I think it's way more important to get a feeling for which cities are worth to settle, and in what order to settle them.
I personally don't have a good intuition for how much city upkeep costs me, but thats very rarely a problem outside of iso-maps.