Catherine's Deity Walkthrough -- Who Master the Resources Dominates the World

[Duckweed]

I am going to show more details on how do I apply this strategy to win a deity game with a random leader on random map.

Some leaders might be a little stronger than others, however, IMO there's really not much difference if you could adopt a good strategy and make most right decisions in the game. People might think Chinese is too strong, then how do you think about Russian?

Let's get back to the actual game.

Game setting

Leader -- Catherine
Difficulty -- Deity
Map -- Standard size, Random
Speed -- Standard

And the start -- pretty common and good, 2 calendar resources and riverside. A lot of forests can be chopped, NO, I won't chop any of them except those on resources as lumber mill is the only improvement providing 2 hammers, which are the shortest in CiV.

Suggestions are welcome.

 

[The Great Apple]

Looks like a nice start. If you can get a couple of maritime city states you're going to end up with a lot of production there! What map type? Pangea?

 

[budweiser]

Suggestions?

You mean you haven't won the map yet?

I usually set up a strong military base as Cathy. The wine gives bonus culture with a monestary, so after a krepost is up, I would go up the top part of the tree.

 

[kossin]

Damn you Duckweed, you're making me want to try out Civ 5 when I don't have the time (even barely for SGOTM)

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I'd settle right there. I'd plantation those spices regardless b/c they give +1 food in addition to +1 gold when plantationed. That's the only thing I'd alter from your original post strategy.

As for the general strategy, is there anyone out there not pushing a horseman rush?

 

[neilkaz]

I'd also settle right there and get on with it. You should late have quite a lot of production out of this city. I look forward to seeing how this game plays out and will find it instructive.

thx .. neilkaz ..

 

[vendur]

Just so you know, there is a resource trading bug with strategic resources. If you trade anything other than the default 5 it gets all screwy. Tried a caatherine resource whoring game and found that out pretty quickly.

 

[Lyoncet]

I like the concept, but that's a bummer about the bug if it's true. What gets screwy about it? Is it like the old bug that kept you from trading anything other than 5 gpt?

Also like to point out that if you're going for a resource dominance game, Harun al-Rashid is probably better suited, since you'll likely be able to leverage more out of the extra luxuries/oil than the double horse/iron/uranium. Heh, maybe he'll end up in the game too and you can duke it out for the hearts and pocketbooks of the world's people.

 

[vendur]

I like the concept, but that's a bummer about the bug if it's true. What gets screwy about it? Is it like the old bug that kept you from trading anything other than 5 gpt?

Also like to point out that if you're going for a resource dominance game, Harun al-Rashid is probably better suited, since you'll likely be able to leverage more out of the extra luxuries/oil than the double horse/iron/uranium. Heh, maybe he'll end up in the game too and you can duke it out for the hearts and pocketbooks of the world's people.

You start getting more back from your trades than you traded to begin with. I'm not 100% sure what does it, but i never seemed to get the bug when i left the default amount of horses/steel alone.

 

[Duckweed]

Looks like a nice start. If you can get a couple of maritime city states you're going to end up with a lot of production there! What map type? Pangea?

Standard size, Random

Suggestions?

You mean you haven't won the map yet?

I usually set up a strong military base as Cathy. The wine gives bonus culture with a monestary, so after a krepost is up, I would go up the top part of the tree.

Military is absolutely necessary for every deity game except isolated start. So I'd beeline to HBR from beginning. Everything else is behind. The tech for Monastery is a low priority than military techs and necessary happiness techs and Writing in my mind

Damn you Duckweed, you're making me want to try out Civ 5 when I don't have the time (even barely for SGOTM)

You don't need much time to master CiV. If you spent hundreds of hours to become a deity player of Civ4, you only need less than 5% of the time for CiV, at least for current version.

I'd settle right there. I'd plantation those spices regardless b/c they give +1 food in addition to +1 gold when plantationed. That's the only thing I'd alter from your original post strategy.

As for the general strategy, is there anyone out there not pushing a horseman rush?

Horsemans are dominant before pikeman and longswordman appear, however, I think there might be some changes to make them more difficult to take city. I don't think it's good to take city from your neighbor with horseman rush as you will be short of happiness and lose the chance of trading with that AI. Moreover, you'll be marked as warmonger by other AIs and will suffer from constant war later.

Just so you know, there is a resource trading bug with strategic resources. If you trade anything other than the default 5 it gets all screwy. Tried a caatherine resource whoring game and found that out pretty quickly.

Yes, also I think the gold for resource deal is a little buggy if one tries to abuse the war. Resource for resource or gold per turn is more reasonable.

I like the concept, but that's a bummer about the bug if it's true. What gets screwy about it? Is it like the old bug that kept you from trading anything other than 5 gpt?

Also like to point out that if you're going for a resource dominance game, Harun al-Rashid is probably better suited, since you'll likely be able to leverage more out of the extra luxuries/oil than the double horse/iron/uranium. Heh, maybe he'll end up in the game too and you can duke it out for the hearts and pocketbooks of the world's people.

I selected Catherine since she is an average leader to apply my strategy, extra strategic resources is just a small bonus.

 

[Alvin Tostig]

should be a fun game - subscribed

 

[Trickster7135]

I would move your settler one tile south and settle on the calendar resource, so you can sell it asap to any nearby civs and buy a new settler with it.

 

[S.K. Ren]

@up: I'm not so sure. He'll still need to get Calendar and though he doesn't need to spend time improving it, but he'll lose a high commerce tile which could have better payoffs in the long run than getting his trade 8 turns earlier.

 

[Trickster7135]

@up: I'm not so sure. He'll still need to get Calendar and though he doesn't need to spend time improving it, but he'll lose a high commerce tile which could have better payoffs in the long run than getting his trade 8 turns earlier.

Its more than 8 turns, because he doesn't need to immediately build a worker either. With the gold from that resource, he can buy a worker once he tech's calendar, so he's actually saving the turns to build a worker, and the turns to improve the resource.

 

[jaycuhbbb]

Eagerly looking forward to your write-up, Duckweed.

 

[stii]

Moving onto the cotton doesn't cost you the title as you get the extra gold anyway. Given that the improvments you can build on cotton are worse than a grassland, the cost is a turn of not bring a city.

 

[vranasm]

would you go ICS style from start?

SIP doesnt look bad at first sight, but you wont get 2f tile before border pop as it seems. And the wine seems under jungle (unimprovable until BW), so probably not that strong

 

[slowcar]

move the warrior on the hill to get some more information.
settle 1 seems a good idea as said before: saves time improving the tile, makes the resource available directly, and as you get the bonus gold in the city tile you have another tile for expansion.

i agree with not rushing, getting stockpiled by the AI early on is a sure death on deity. depends on the expansion space, of course.

 

[Duckweed]

I would move your settler one tile south and settle on the calendar resource, so you can sell it asap to any nearby civs and buy a new settler with it.

Good suggestion, I agree that it's a more efficient way to collect gold. However I guess this might be an issue to be fixed soon. As in Civ4, you can't access the resource until the correspondent tech completed. I will try to avoid on using buggy features in the play. So, if the instant accessing to the resource is not available, SIP is better since the spice tile is going to be one of the valuable tile to work on when the capital is going to produce settlers for a long time. Worker force is never going to be a problem as most of my cities will stay at size 1 for a long time.

would you go ICS style from start?

SIP doesnt look bad at first sight, but you wont get 2f tile before border pop as it seems. And the wine seems under jungle (unimprovable until BW), so probably not that strong

I will go REXing from start, I guess that's a different concept from ICS. The happiness is the limited factor for early expansion, this is more severe when I am going to sell most of them. So yes I will try to expand as much as possible, but will only grab the site with happiness and/or strategic resources.

As the reason I mentioned in the reply to Trickster7135, I am going to settle in place. BTW, the riverside spice is covered by forest.

@slowcar see above.

 

[stii]

Last time I settled on a happyness resource the game deducted 5 from the difficulty level happyness, so I guess it might not be so good