Arabia 22
Aztec 13
Babylon 26
Carthage 20
China 24
England 21
Ethiopia 8
Greece 22
Inca 29
Iroquois 15
Korea 25
Maya 26
Netherlands 18
Ottoman Empire 5
Persia 19
Roman Empire 15
Russia 16
Siam 17
So, vote for the day - and this time I give it with 200% conviction that it's true. Over the last 4 days I spent more than 16 hours (yeah, I am crazy) trying to get Korea to perform well on Deity. I regularly went for a Liberty-Tradition opening with a view for a jump to Rationalism later on. I picked every time Messenger of the Gods for more Beakers too. All of the playthroughs have shown something simple:
- No second city before NC!!! Plant a second and it will destroy your tech advances because you need to build a Library there first and then continue with NC. This squarely means no second city till around T50-55 (if you beeline Pottery-Writing-Calendar-Philosophy and have good production), by which time any AI has planted between 4 and 6. If you spawn in a dense neighborhood, you will barely have any place to settle a second city yourself, as you will most probably have to fend off 1-2 attacks anyway.
- Bad starting location = No go. On Deity, you need luxuries to provide happiness for you, and even more to sell to the AI to cover for the tons of stuff it gets as a bonus. With a poor starting location and poor city placement options, you will find yourself with one very unhappy nation even with only 2 cities. I had a loc with 1 copper, 1 Marble and 3 Wine, near river but no mountain, and it was difficult as hell to keep the people happy, forcing me to keep a copy of the resources just to stay a few points above zero.
- Oxford University for quick Renaissance? You wish. It is highly unlikely you will manage to somehow time the construction of the universities in all your 3-4 cities with your next policy.
- The slow tech advances in the beginning, means you get beat to almost any wonder on maps with 8 civs or more. GL and ToA are usually constructed between T26 and T37, HG around T40-45, and Petra around T60. During this time you will still be struggling on Deity to get the NC and maybe manage to costruct the Oracle, which is still a great achievement, as it gives you +1 GS point. And at any start, pray that Ramesses isn't there - he will beat you to the PT with a 99% certainty.
On the other side, Babylon gets a quick tech boost which allows them to get at least 2 of the early Wonders. I had a ToA + Petra + Oracle start and it was awesome. Allowed me to time Oxford with Compass and get Astronomy for free and get Rationalism on the next turn which allowed for even greater beaker boost - even better if you have some stashed gold and you can buy the Observatory. Korea in my opinion, can never beat that. That is the biggest advantage of Babylon - being tech independent and managing to stay on par with Deity AI early in the game - with a single city if necessary. You can always expand after you hit Renaissance - go to a secluded island if necessary - you have Astronomy, so you can embark and move anywhere.
from horses and iron tiles(and extra deals) make this civ a nice place to live and raise. Rushes are easier to achieve.
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