Deity Difficulty Strategies?

[Dorkus]

So I'm not a civ buff, but I always play games at the hardest difficulty from the start.

After a number of failed campaigns (in particular, wonder building seems utterly worthless at this difficulty, given the vast advantage the AI has in production time), I tried a Roman Praetorian rush strat with moderate success, largely because I lucked out with an iron mine next to the capital. But after taking a few cities, I ended up getting bogged down against highly defended (read 10 archers with upgrades) stacks with a low hp and financially draining expeditionary force.

What else have others tried? Given the value of collateral damage, I think I will go with a Chinese Cho unique unit strat next....

 

[joethreeblah]

You might be the only one brave enough to be playing at that difficulty level yet.

 

[Arkanin]

Yeah, I have to agree.

I played my first game on Noble. Had a decent go of it, made it through OKishly. I play another game of Noble and totally sweep the board now that I understand the mechanics. Right now I'm playing on Monarch and it's hit-or-miss.

Frankly, if you don't graduate yourself up, you'll probably never be able to win. Deity level is mostly meant to be played by people who have played the game for a long time. Supposedly, we know of only one beta tester that beat a deity game during the ongoing beta.

Regarding wonders, they seem to be sort of an "advantage multiplier". If you've got big advantage over the other countries already, wonder production will serve to make that advantage even more pronounced and extreme. On the other hand, if you're struggling just to get by, the extra resource drain may be enough for the AI to get in that coup de grace. So, I agree with what you say about wonders.

 

[Dorkus]

It seems to me the only way to win is to focus on early military tech and hope to take over a powerful enemy's capital (and other cities) early. Use the boost from those developed cities to take on another enemy, and so one.

You can't win a tech race (whether to space or higher mlitary power). even if you focus on one path, some civ will beat you due to vastly faster tech at deity difficulty. And the longer you wait around, the longer the enemy's superior tech/production times will eventually overwhelm you when they do make an attack. (in one of my early games, Spain had multiple 8-man conquistador stacks even before I had managed to secure iron!)

 

[Dorkus]

Regarding wonders, they seem to be sort of an "advantage multiplier". If you've got big advantage over the other countries already, wonder production will serve to make that advantage even more pronounced and extreme. On the other hand, if you're struggling just to get by, the extra resource drain may be enough for the AI to get in that coup de grace. So, I agree with what you say about wonders.

I've tried many times at deity level to build a wonder. (going straight tech to early wonders) I have never been successful, even with an industrious leader. The AI tech advantage is just too steep

 

[Sayounara]

Deity victory is possible on a duel size map. If you play it on any half-size or bigger map, the maintenace and unhappiness makes any long game unsustainable.

 

[clinton]

Is Diety 60% cost factor like in civ3? There's no sid by default is there, with 40% cost factor?

 

[Heroes]

About wonders: I think the key thing is the metal casting tech, which unlocks forge. This way you can begin to hire an engineer, who will produce a great engineer in at most 34 turns, then you can surely rush a wonder.

 

[Dorkus]

Don't think it's possible to win this game on standard settings at deity setting. If there's one enemy civ, you can do a swordsmen/praetorian rush.

But as long as there is more than one civ, the AI totally destroys you in tech/expansion, as it seems to produce stuff 5x faster than you do.

 

[Dairuka]

I've played Diety level three times now. Got completely massacred on all three times. I now play Monarch and polish up on military skills since theres zero chance of keeping the AI appeased long enough to gain a good foothold.

Building a culture at this level is simply unfeasable, even with a large military backing you up while you wait. The AI simply advances in Technologies far too fast, which allows it to upgrade it's army well before you can even come up with a counter. You'd probably have to do some research to second guess the AI... Or come up with a Rush Strategy that can kill off one civilization, granting you some free cities - before the other AI civilizations can speed past you in technology while you're still building enough of a military presence to keep the AI's from attacking you. To do this, you'd need a civilization with ancient age units that require little or common resources. {Aztec, Inca, Roman, Mongol}

However, the civ's that require Iron and copper for their units are in my opinion too much of a gamble. Horses would be a safer bet. Just remember that rushing now is a HUGE gamble. More often than not, you'll be repelled, and so far behind that it's impossible to catch up...

One of my personally favorite rushes is to play as the Inca's, and to build up a vast army of 6-7 UU's. Since by now most civ's have archery, they're defending their cities with nothing but archer's and usually around a 20% culture defense bonus. That means easy pickings for 1-2 cities during a time when most civ's are still trying to build up.

In my opinion, the only way to survive in Diety is to be vicious. Kill them before they destroy you. There are no save-your-arse gifts to the AI {like you can do in the easier difficulties - I had to give 4 tech's just for a +1 favorism due to being fair in trade relations!!! This was to a nation that was pathetically weak!} to keep them from demolishing you with Longbowmen, Swordsmen and Knights while you're still monkeying around with Warriors, Horse Archers and Archers. =(

 

[Dorkus]

I completely agree that one must be aggressive to win on deity. But you can't take out more than one civ before the AI tech advantage just swamps you. Even the boost from greater territory/cities is not enough as time passes (and your army will be far too weak to take on another civ)

 

[Islandia]

I haven't won on deity yet, but I have been playing on tiny pangaea maps (i.e. 3 computers) with the rest of the standard settings. I guess if you wanted to be cheesy about it you could set it to 8 or 9 computers so that the computers have no room to actually build with their second settler they get free, but I'm thinking the design for winning on deity is to play under some of the standard settings they have set up.

I've been able to get close on a few games and it seems to me the key to winning is military for sure so aggressiveness is definitely one of the traits you need. The second needs to be something that can generate culture or influence quickly so you get some semi decent borders around you. Towards that end the three leaders I have found to be semi viable for this strategy are the mongols, greeks, and aztecs. All three have a pretty viable early game unique unit (though the jaguar seems a bit weak). But my personal preference is for Kublai Khan because you are pretty much only going to have room to set up two cities before the computer completely engulfs you and those two extra culture per turn really help in pushing back your borders. Also the horse resource can be seen right away as opposed to bronze/iron and the keshiks do really well against archers. With kublai I research animal husbandry, archery, horse archers and then beeline for mathematics (for catapults). Depending on starting resources, I try to get to size three before stopping growth in the capital (have to build on a river so you get the +2 health bonus or this doesn't work). At that point build a settler and use it to secure a horse resource if you don't have one in your starting squares, then pop one worker out. By this time, your computer opponent should have 4 cities or so and you shoudl be close to done on the horse archery. Connect up your horse resource and set your main city to production of a barracks(Since there are usually 3-4 special resources in your starting squares I like to use 1 guy on the horse resource, 1 on a mined hill/copper/bronze/gold, and one on a floodplain/and or forest grassland). Once your second city hits size 2-3 it should also be configured in the same way. Fortunately on a tiny map with good blocking placement for your second city you will probably only face 5 cities from the nearest ai usually defended by 3 archers + 1 spearmen. The capital is probably your best bet for killing them quickly but I actually prefer to take their other cities that have a bit less culture defense. Depending on luck you should be bringing 5 keshiks + 1 archer + 1 axeman versus 2 of their cities and winning with maybe 2-3 keshiks and the archer left. At that point you will hopefully have gotten mathematics and can use your new cities to build a barracks + catapults (remember that as creative you will get your cultural border expanded for free so need for an obelisk/temple) to then completely kill off one of the ais.

This is the part I am now stuck on is after killing the ai, I have a horrid time with the second one because it is usually already defending with longbowman or better so I have been working on strategies to defeat that. Anyway those are my thoughts so far and as I said I haven't beaten deity yet so there is certainly room for improvement and would love to hear your feedback.

 

[Dorkus]

interesting. i'll try the mongols.

 

[Heroes]

Islandia, do you kill off the first AI, or do you keep it OCC to extort some techs? I guess extorting techs is better, since a peace treaty only lasts for 10 turns. In civ 3, "oscillating war" is a common strategy, and it should be useful too in civ 4.

 

[Rustypipe]

The only way I have come close to beating the comp on diety is by playing a contients map and just having the luck of that both comps where stuck on smaller crapy islands with little resources making them unable to use there super expanding diety powers to over run me. At which once i got my religions setup i raced for the sea to snag up any other possible expansion efforts by the comp and focused on the space race. By having more land then the comp i was able to acutally out reaserch them and ALMOST won, untill some chump pulled a culture victory out on me ! i was so mad, but next time around i will pester them with bombardments from sea and use military units to bombard them or just rip up there land to force them to produce less culture and more milatary. Unfortantly this is souly a roll of the dice. If the comps ever get a better chunk of land then me its game over

This is also on a Duel-Tiny size map. Anything bigger the comp just out expands you and lays the hurt on you from there.

 

[Dorkus]

I gave up. Playing one notch down now. :O

 

[Gufnork]

Well, they did warn you. I too always play strategy games on the highest difficulty. Civ 3 and 4 are the only exceptions. I have beaten Civ 3 on Deity, but then they released another difficulty.