Byzantine deity LP/help

[Bobafett0610]

Making a Byzantine deity LP/help thread. Have zero video capabilities/skills so it will be in screenshots. I'm trying to do a Byzantine deity playthrough with the following settings but for some reason I either have the worst of luck, or am just not that skilled at playing Byzantine so advice as I plod along would be appreciated. (Note: I've gotten better at uploading pics compared to my last thread, won't be as bad lol).

The setup:

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The start & capital founding:

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Standard exploring/ruin grabbing, and social policy snatching. Also, capital build order being (scout, monument, shrine, worker, few settlers).

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Tech plans:

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More discover/SP's.

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The map so far. Red dots are potential city sites.

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Future plans: nab the panth that gives the culture and faith bonus to gold and silver. After building a few settlers in capital, build granary and watermill to focus on gold tiles, then pump out 5-6 archers.

Edit: for some reason the red dots aren't showing up...Bottom line is I was planning on one city next to the river near capetown, one a little north of that on the coast near the deer with the copper slightly below it, one near the pearls/deer on the coast, and one on the river near the ivory on the coast...

 

[Bobafett0610]

Popped archery from a hut. Queued up some more techs. Got some faith from a ruin and founded a panth.

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Got a free settler from lib SP, continuing through that tree. Was going to found it further west, but had to settle by pearls first due to constant barb attacks. Couldn't escort with spearman as I was getting hit from two fronts. Bought archer.

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After building another city near copper and moving another settler to capetown, started on granary while using spearman/archer for barb defense.

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Trading with celts (west of us), and bought worker.

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Started on ship for exploring. Then this happened, guys popped out of nowhere.

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I was already churning out archers from my capital, wasen't enough to compete with these guys. Haven't played as Celts yet so I wasn't sure what UU these were, but they were pretty buffed. Also, scout got trapped between 3 barb archers and killed. Figured I'd go for the horse UU to help as it has enough STR to deal with those Celt UU. Met England and traded. Problem is I had two other archers dealing with a barb camp north of capital that was churning out units and pillaging when the war broke out. I had to finish it off before I could move those archers back to help the other two.

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Sacked by the unit spam. They started pounding away on the next city, bought another ship to help out as there was an archer clog.

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Barley held it. And nabbed a religion. The bonus belief allows some interesting combos.

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Moving in, brought up spearman from south to help. (He was fortified by the ivory for city placement protection, couldn't get a settler down there due to barbs and war).

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Out of the blue, this happened...

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Couldn't have happened at a worst moment. They landed a bunch of troops in one turn, trapping my archers between England and Celts army.

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Got slaughtered from the trap, second city took by english. Met napoleon. Got spy, and final pic for now (no army in last pic, except for I think one stray unit).

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Does this look savable? Not having high hopes as it stands. I would of gotten comp bowmen a little earlier, but when war broke out it just wasn't worth it due to fund shortage; when trading with england they didn't have a large gold reserve so I had to make due with GPT. The attack by england just flat out killed me though, having a good 8+ archers trapped between a bunch of Celt UU's (5-6 arhers on hills, some with barrage still couldn't kill one of their UU in one turn) and English sworsman/archers/cats/warrors was murder. Poor guys had no escape route. Having the two ships with ranged attack (UU's) helped a bit on the port city, but not enough to hold off the spam as hills were making the range on them very short. Shame, this was my best start so far with this civ, all others have been jungle or tundra with only one lux, even with trying both disable and enable start bias. On the other starts, I was never able to get a panthegon as someone would enchance their religion, or the allowed number was taken; annoying even as I focused on shrines each playthrough. Even worse is when you not only are denied a panth, but can't get a religion quick enough, makes this civ worthless when that happens as their UU's aren't that great (unless playing island map with their boat).

 

[Bobafett0610]

Round 2:
Same settings as before, same starting pattern:

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Until...

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Round 3 coming soon!

 

[The Pilgrim]

That's what you get when you're chasing after religion and not settling on hills on deity. Very typical games. No bad luck.
I don't want to sound mean, but my suggestion would be to try immortal first. You can get away with both quite often.

 

[Bobafett0610]

Got a much better going in this one. Used to never use the DoF thing as I found it messed stuff up in earlier games, although I found it useful on deity as it helps give me a powerful civ as a protector early on (in the case of the game below Babs). formed a couple of DoF's later on as some of the civs had the same friends. Doing much better in this one until Spain backstabbed, although I think I can hold her off while I pump out more units. I traded her 6 iron for marble awhile back, she used the iron for longswordsmen, then attacks giving them that -50% strategic resource penalty so I chewed through them pretty fast with xbowmen. Having a lot of extra happiness & gpt, starting to get pagodas in my cities, then switching to caths.

Figured this was going to be another failure at the start, but it turned out well so I don't have starting screens. Here is as it stands so far:

Civ at turn 119:

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Religion (mine is the star one):

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When Spain attacked (happiness was in the 20's but it dropped a bit due to the war canceling some deals with spain, also, austria allied two CS that were my allies in the same turn by quite a bit of influence):

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Edit: I posted the savegame file if someone wants a peek for clarity.

 

[Bobafett0610]

That's what you get when you're chasing after religion and not settling on hills on deity. Very typical games. No bad luck.
I don't want to sound mean, but my suggestion would be to try immortal first. You can get away with both quite often.

I see what you're saying. Problem is, I tried that on the first 7 games with this civ and never got a religion due to the early focus on defense on deity games. This made the game pretty pointless considering the civ being played.

 

[gozpel]

On Deity you need at least 4-5 archers and 2 melee, before you even think about building new cities, maybe you can squeeze in one more town. Only lucky ppl like MadViking can go through 2 ages before being attacked.

Your game seems pretty true and you have to defend yourself. If you survive that and have some rolls of luck, then you counter. Build 2 cities, archers and warriors. Defend, win that fight, then slowly enter enemy territory, kill stuff with archers.

I know, it's not fun but you can win at least a little bit of the lands this way.

Then you'll need more luck!

That's why I play Emperor/Immortal and never touch Deity again. The AI bonus is just stupid.