Any way to make Deity less difficult? BTW - I think people fake beating Deity
- Thread starter depner72
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2020
- Messages
- 723
Or you play Bull Moose Teddy, since that will immediately tell you very directly if you're doing something right vs doing something wrong.
Alashiya
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2018
- Messages
- 160
so you just have to be prepared to defend yourself asap, fail to do this and you get kerbstomped
depner72
Chieftain
Not the biggest flex on this site, but I did it. I beat Deity! Now it is about managing my world to the best possible extent.
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2017
- Messages
- 3,788
Hey congratulations!! Knew you could do it
Alashiya
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2018
- Messages
- 160
congrats I bet you feel great don't you
here's the music you need Whos the guy who can micromanage an empire
Depner!
Conquer MoFo's threatening his empire
Depner!(you watch your mouth!)
How are you at early war and diplomacy? One of the reasons that people tend to overlook religion (myself included) is that getting a religion consumes a lot of resources which means that you can end up vulnerable if you can't manage those things. Knowing when (and when not) to get the religion is a big part of situational game play. I've won Deity on all victory types except diplomacy and have still gotten this wrong. In general, if there's a civ whose borders you can see from one of your cities, you'd better be building units and forget any other plan you have because they will for sure DoW you. If not, you have time to get the religion.
DeckerdJames
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2019
- Messages
- 281
This may have already been said above but I didn’t read all the replies. Here is the first major mistake that means you will most likely have an early war, especially on deity.
You invited Cleopatra to your capital !
You will do better if you understand one thing. Keep the location of your cities, especially your capital when it is your only city, secret. Ideally, you do this until you can protect them.
Things to know. With the standard AI.
Diplomacy options when meeting. You invite them to your capital. They invite you to theirs. You exchange locations of your capital. Or you decline.
Which option you receive seems to depend on who is closer to a city. I am not sure of the exact mechanics. If your cities are something like 10 hexes apart or more, you will have the option to exchange locations. Beware, the AI will forward settle toward you and once you have cities less than about 10 hexes apart, they might attack.
Caveat, if a civ gets a movement bonus they might attack from further away.
Tips
Use units to slow down how quickly your cities are discovered by occupying key hexes when enemy units are approaching your cities.
Be aware of which hexes will grant the AI visibility of your cites.
Sometimes you might choose a settle location because the city is harder to spot. Open ground is harder. Be aware that, just like for you, if a city is settled in an area they have already explored, they will see it immediately.
I am not sure of the exact mechanics, but the AI does not seem to react to visibility of your borders. This seems to change at some point. It might be when you close your borders. At some point though, it seems they can attack without having seen your actual city location, but in the very beginning they have to see it, just like a barbarian scout does before it can return to its fort and trigger an invasion.
Use your denunciations. Sometimes the computer will turn a settler around after you have denounced them if they are close to enough combat units that the settler might be in danger. Remember, settlers see 3 hexes and some bonuses exist that grant changes to a unit’s visibility rules.
Use the surprise war option. Scouts do not seem to care about denunciations or declarations of war, but they will try to preserve their life by retreating if you damage them. Be aware, they will sometimes try to circle around your units. Declaring war will typically initiate an attack from their combat units against yours if they are in close proximity. If they retreat away from you, they tend to avoid going in your direction if they have other options. Try to control their retreat so that it is away from your undiscovered city.
If you declare war before they do and they discover your city later, they often won’t rush you immediately in the same way because they seem to be following a different war script.
Early exploration. Explore fresh water, or less optimally, salt water for city locations.
A second city as early as possible, safely, is advantageous. Look for a city location with better production in the first ring if the city won’t have extra culture. It takes many turns for border expansion without cultural help. Producing warriors and slingers from your second city can be a good strategy. They cost nothing. They can be upgraded later or used for supporting your expansion, fog busting future city sites or areas where you don’t want barbarians to spawn. With military tradition, a group of warriors grouped together with support bonuses can be a good blockade even against stronger units.
In the first turns of the game, on deity, play defensively to protect your capital’s location from being discovered.
“Keep it secret, keep it safe” - Gandalf
You invited Cleopatra to your capital !
You will do better if you understand one thing. Keep the location of your cities, especially your capital when it is your only city, secret. Ideally, you do this until you can protect them.
Things to know. With the standard AI.
Diplomacy options when meeting. You invite them to your capital. They invite you to theirs. You exchange locations of your capital. Or you decline.
Which option you receive seems to depend on who is closer to a city. I am not sure of the exact mechanics. If your cities are something like 10 hexes apart or more, you will have the option to exchange locations. Beware, the AI will forward settle toward you and once you have cities less than about 10 hexes apart, they might attack.
Caveat, if a civ gets a movement bonus they might attack from further away.
Tips
Use units to slow down how quickly your cities are discovered by occupying key hexes when enemy units are approaching your cities.
Be aware of which hexes will grant the AI visibility of your cites.
Sometimes you might choose a settle location because the city is harder to spot. Open ground is harder. Be aware that, just like for you, if a city is settled in an area they have already explored, they will see it immediately.
I am not sure of the exact mechanics, but the AI does not seem to react to visibility of your borders. This seems to change at some point. It might be when you close your borders. At some point though, it seems they can attack without having seen your actual city location, but in the very beginning they have to see it, just like a barbarian scout does before it can return to its fort and trigger an invasion.
Use your denunciations. Sometimes the computer will turn a settler around after you have denounced them if they are close to enough combat units that the settler might be in danger. Remember, settlers see 3 hexes and some bonuses exist that grant changes to a unit’s visibility rules.
Use the surprise war option. Scouts do not seem to care about denunciations or declarations of war, but they will try to preserve their life by retreating if you damage them. Be aware, they will sometimes try to circle around your units. Declaring war will typically initiate an attack from their combat units against yours if they are in close proximity. If they retreat away from you, they tend to avoid going in your direction if they have other options. Try to control their retreat so that it is away from your undiscovered city.
If you declare war before they do and they discover your city later, they often won’t rush you immediately in the same way because they seem to be following a different war script.
Early exploration. Explore fresh water, or less optimally, salt water for city locations.
A second city as early as possible, safely, is advantageous. Look for a city location with better production in the first ring if the city won’t have extra culture. It takes many turns for border expansion without cultural help. Producing warriors and slingers from your second city can be a good strategy. They cost nothing. They can be upgraded later or used for supporting your expansion, fog busting future city sites or areas where you don’t want barbarians to spawn. With military tradition, a group of warriors grouped together with support bonuses can be a good blockade even against stronger units.
In the first turns of the game, on deity, play defensively to protect your capital’s location from being discovered.
“Keep it secret, keep it safe” - Gandalf
Last edited:
There are many answers to this post, but I don't see any that directly address making Deity easier (or harder) so I hope this helps.
Play against easier or harder civilizations
Some civilizations put up more of a fight than others. Rather than have them be randomly selected, you can manually pick to go up against some pushover civs. This post definitely helped me. https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...he-hands-of-the-ai-elimination-thread.656981/
Choose an easier or harder map
With a continents map, you absolutely have to invest in a navy. With a highlands map, there's no point of even researching sailing.
Make the map more or less crowded
If you like early war and want to be sure to have a neighbor to go to war with, add an extra civ. If you are working on peaceful play, remove one! I can't say which way is harder or easier since that depends on skills.
Learn more victory conditions
It's easy to think you're ready to play Deity because you can win science or religion on emperor consistently, but you need to be familiar with all victory types. Otherwise you might be going after a victory condition not suited to the circumstances because you don't recognize the easier one in front of you.
Change Map Size
Certain victories are easier on a smaller map. Religious victories on a standard size map can be tedious since you might have a neighbor twelve turns away from your nearest Holy site. Somebody will grab a science or culture victory two turns before you can get your last wave of apostles over there. If everyone is your neighbor (and especially if you flip some cities), you can convert the map much faster. Similar for domination. I believe culture is easier on a larger map since you have more civs from whom you can grab tourists. (Although I am not sure of this and might be about to learn something new)
Play Slower
In single player, you can take as long as you want for a turn.
I just now watched the video. I am far from the best player but I notice some additional things. Let me know if you disagree with my assessment. I would love the chance to learn. I also couldn't hear the audio.
I don't think a worse settling tile could have been picked. Not a single hill in the whole city. There's simply no way the capital will have enough production to get out of the classical era alive.
Settling to the west between the incense and bananas would have made for a great start and early pantheon. The plains hills to the east also looks like a good spot. Would get the bananas and be within one tile of the diamonds. There's also a plains hills (rainforest) to the north that looks appealing. The plan from the outset should have been to get cities on those three tiles.
At 5:47 the tribal village was ignored! Maybe it wasn't seen. That's a way to make Deity easier. Use a UI mod that makes the tribal villages more noticeable. But so far we are off to a bad start. I can't see the turn count on the video so I'm using time offsets. Another tribal village ignored at 10:09.
At 11:22 you can see the two warriors outside the capital. But no change of plans from building the settler to building a warrior!
Then the builder chop gets used toward the settler. Had the production been switched to warrior, it was a winnable fight. Then at 14:24, more production of a (nearly useless) slinger. There might still have been time to get a warrior build for the garrison strength
If a save file from the turn where the settler was chopped is available, I'd love to try to play it out. I think that I could have, from that point, not only held off the attack, but counter-attacked and taken a city or two off of her hands.
DeckerdJames
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2019
- Messages
- 281
Let me preface this. Deity is hard for me. I apologize if I am over explaining some things or explaining things which are already known to you.
I would have probably moved my warrior atop the stone to hopefully see 2 tiles around it. I would have seen the copper instead of the incense, but the incense is probably a better find. Considering his choice and the visibility of the incense instead, I would probably move between the banana and the stone, and I would expect the incense to be a high priority for the first natural border expansion. I would work the banana right away because I want a pop 2 city quickly, because lately I have been trying to settle my second city as fast as possible. As soon as it went to pop 2, I would switch to the stone and the wooded hills, or incense if/when available, and produce a settler. I would aim to settle near that gold mine for the gold and it is easy to improve to two hammers early in the game.
I like the spot between the banana and gold mine for the second city because they are both in the first ring. Non-capital cities that don't get a free building like Trajan does with the monument, have very little culture and it takes something like 30 turns to grow the border at pop 1. The city does have a banana so it will grow up and expand it little bit faster. Each pop is ~.3 culture, or maybe 1 culture per 3 population. Something like that. I am just going off what he sees at turn 1. Maybe it if viable to settle on the plains hill and get the extra production instead. I like to build warriors/slingers in city 2 and production rules for that. However, a gold per turn gift could be useful too.
Meanwhile, I would have sent my warrior to explore around the gold mine and the other banana, because I am usually interested in finding my second city location asap. Having good food in both cities means I can grow quicker and build up my loyalty pressure of the surrounding territory. Of course, we know that he has a close neighbor to the north, so it is going to cause friction. The rival will have more trouble settling in his direction. Does that tempt the AI to explore his region? I hope so because that would be logical AI, but I don't know. Either way, we know he needs a security force soon, but I tend to want two cities early. If I have a close neighbor, I will often fall into trouble and I have many very close games because of that and I lose a fair percentage of the openings because of the aggressive expansion.
The problem with working the banana is that I would have started a scout while waiting to grow, but I would be highly tempted to suspend building the scout to produce the settler quicker. I often get into trouble when I have a 3/1 tile because delaying the scout increases the likelihood of a dark age and the scout can be useful for slowing down enemy units. I try to get in their way as much as possible. Then it is tempting to look a little bit further with the one warrior but getting too far away is easily punished if the enemy finds you.
I think it a good idea to uncover a 10-hex distance around the capital. Enemy cities within about that range mean an AI with normal movement speed might attack. A scout definitely helps with that, so it might just be better to produce the scout a fast a possible and then afterwards produce the settler as fast as possible. I am still figuring that out and only as a general rule of thumb. Whatever the world map looks like could influence those decisions.
I would consider all civilizations to be bloodthirsty enemies as the game opens on the deity difficulty unless you can get a friendship agreement. Sometimes a gift can help. I have experimented a little with gifts and they can work, but the little that you have often won't be impactful enough if you are discovered very early. However, considering gifts, settling the capital near the gold mine and getting the 3 extra gold per turn could also be a viable strategy if you want an early friend and are willing to delay expansion. You could gift the 3 gold per turn and the AI will value it pretty well, I think, but if the AI finds your city and thinks it can take your city easily, I think it will usually try. So, you could move to the gold mine and build two more fighting units and a scout and expand afterwards. If you find a neighbor, you could send a delegation immediately and gift the 3 gold per turn and they might like you pretty quickly since that 3 gold helps every turn, I think.
When I was a little bit greener, I might have settled where he did. The reason why is I used to prioritize what is in the second ring a bit more than I do now. When I was greener than that, I would want to maximize the entire 3 rings of the city region. Now, I know that the first ring is critical in a deity game. Knowing that the capital, having the palace building, will expand to the second ring more quickly, but it still takes time and 2/1 tiles are not great. Food helps the empire expand more quickly. A very arid region, which sometimes is the luck of the draw, you might have 1 food tiles and that means you need 15 turns to grow. Often it will be a 1/3 tile so you can at least make some units, but I prefer a 2/1 to a 1/3 these days, because from turn one, with a 2/1, I can grow the city to size 2 and build a scout in 8 turns, and then I put two citizens on production to get a second settler and hopefully settle my next city near more food so I can start my loyalty pressure claim. If the cities remain low population, rivals can settle closer toward you if they are near. Building loyalty pressure is part of my opening strategy, and I try to do it if I can.
Of course, all of this analysis is after seeing him play and reading the thoughts of others. I can't say for sure what I would have done if this was my game, and it was completely fresh to me.
Last edited:
That's a good assumption. I think Victoria once stated that if you settle within 10 tiles or so of another civs capital, they are pretty much guaranteed to DoW you. From my experience, if they are as close as Cleopatra was there, they are going to DoW you as soon as they run out of space to expand.
I think that's the hard part Diety vs. Immortal. On immortal you can kind of just push forward with your plan. On Deity, if you see something like another civ that close, you need to recognize it and change your plan near immediately
Alashiya
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2018
- Messages
- 160
I tend to go for an early war where I can,I call it the neighbour from Hell approach where I wipe out the nearest civ for the land & resources.Basil II's huge advantage is he can deal with walls even with basic horsemen. I tend to Discover astrology first.so I can get choral music & crusade I'm not great at diplomacy
Do you have a video of you conquering a neighbor civ on Deity?
Alashiya
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2018
- Messages
- 160
I'm not upto Diety level yet though I tried it a few times
I’m a pretty average player and play purely for fun and am not strict at all in the game. I rarely play deity but I can win it with a few changes in set up. What I do to help me to win is…(and I have no idea if others think this is cheating 
) but I turn off Barbs, I turn off religious victory (mostly cause I hate doing it) and I choose a bigger map and remove most opponents as this gives me time to establish myself. Once I have walls and decent ranged units I play defensive because the AI is crap and you can just defend until they have knocked down their numbers and then go offensive. Main thing is to keep my head down early until I get established and then it’s easy. Slow and steady wins the race!
) but I turn off Barbs, I turn off religious victory (mostly cause I hate doing it) and I choose a bigger map and remove most opponents as this gives me time to establish myself. Once I have walls and decent ranged units I play defensive because the AI is crap and you can just defend until they have knocked down their numbers and then go offensive. Main thing is to keep my head down early until I get established and then it’s easy. Slow and steady wins the race!There's nothing wrong with turning off religious victory. However, even if you don't want to play for it, you can still leave it on. The AI can never win a religious victory. i don't know why. But, of all the victory types, it's the only one I've never seen the AI able to achieve. Having an AI going for a religious victory that it will never achieve can actually benefit you. The AI spamming religious units is somewhat annoying. Do they stop doing that if you turn off religious victory?I’m a pretty average player and play purely for fun and am not strict at all in the game. I rarely play deity but I can win it with a few changes in set up. What I do to help me to win is…(and I have no idea if others think this is cheating
Barbarians are a way of getting units promoted and getting free technologies. You might want to reconsider your attitude toward them. It requires some micro-management and you can occasionally get overwhelmed but once you build the skills to manage them, I think they make the Deity game easier. Of course I also like using Heathen Conversion Apostles even if not playing for a religious victory.
I’ve definitely had ai win religious victory. Mostly once your down to a few civs and if you didn’t found a religion to counter it. Turning the victory off doesn’t stop them spamming you but you don’t need to fight them. You can either accept their religion or if you’re like me and like having a religion to choose the beliefs then you just use inquisitors, I never buy apostles or missionaries.
I sometimes don’t mind Barbarians in lower levels to mix it up but on Deity I find they’re way too much trouble for what they give. I prefer just fighting civs, war is good for the economy so my units get plenty of experience and this way I know where my enemy comes from, I can counter appropriately. Barbs are not realistic, they can pop up anywhere, always pillaging and constantly attacking once their scout discovers you, plus they seem to always have the current units to the top civ, so if you’re off to a slow start you can have Barb cavalry attacking your chariots. Turning them off makes things a bit more believable in my opinion.
Nigel_Tufnel2
King
I've had a lot of fun playing with Gedemon's Yet (not) Another Maps Pack mod. You can set Earth map to be any chunk you want (like just N America). Set it up so it's like India in the West and the Bering Sea in the East, pick however many TSL civs you want, and play as one on the coast (Japan, Australia, and Kupe are easiest). Get Settlers swimming towards Borneo, the Philippines, and Australia if you are Japan, after starting with maybe 3 cities at home.
You will encounter lots of Barbs, but that's the kind of tough opponent I like in Civ VI! (Or turn off for easier play). Meet Nan Madol and Auckland and have crazy culture and water production. It might be a challenge to settle Australia, as there will be some inland camps that will have lots of units. Easiest IMO is to play as Australia and make sure you have plenty of early military to clear camps and bust fog before they go crazy. There are many Natural Wonders to get great HS adjacencies, and of course Australia gets great oceanside adjacenies as well.
You will encounter lots of Barbs, but that's the kind of tough opponent I like in Civ VI! (Or turn off for easier play). Meet Nan Madol and Auckland and have crazy culture and water production. It might be a challenge to settle Australia, as there will be some inland camps that will have lots of units. Easiest IMO is to play as Australia and make sure you have plenty of early military to clear camps and bust fog before they go crazy. There are many Natural Wonders to get great HS adjacencies, and of course Australia gets great oceanside adjacenies as well.
