Deity early game wars

[stii]

When I try a comp bow rush it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't so I though I'd try and discuss what the best way of doing this is. My opening for this is roughly,

scout,monument,shrine,settler,settler,barracks, archerx5, spearmanx2.

Getting a worker off liberty and probably buying a 2nd worker and the two spearmen.

Tech to set up lux then to comp bows and upgrade all my archers then attack.


I'm not sure if I should build the barracks but you need it for spearmen so I guess yes? I'm also not sure what the best way to attack the AI is do you declare war early and have them move their units towards you and pick them off or launch a surprise attack?

I tried opening honour but it didn't seem worth losing the free worker and the money that generates.

 

[slowcar]

what do you need the spearmen for? together with the barracks they delay your initial attack force.

 

[The Pilgrim]

It's really situational. But if my borders are pressed, usually by the time I'm ready to go offensive (t50-60), I get DoW'ed, so there is no much dilemma.

I seldom build shrines. BO is something like this: Scout - monument (skip if Tradition and culture ruin, second scout in this case) - granary - buy a worker (or Citizenship) - settlers (2 usually) and archers. In Tradition games I buy one settler, preferably two, but depends on AI's funds. Might squeeze in another scout if pangaea at this point. Keep cranking out archers until I have 7-8. I don't build a spearman. If starting warrior got an upgrade ruin, cool, if not - warrior+scout works fine.

I don't think CB rush can work every game. You need cooperating terrain and victim.

 

[BrokTheFanatic]

I wouldn't build the barracks, better to have another unit or 2 IMO.

 

[anthropophage]

I'm not sure if I should build the barracks but you need it for spearmen

No. You need Bronze Working for spearmen, you don't need a barracks. Also, skip the spears, skip bronze working altogether unless you're on jungle, get a couple of warriors and another archer instead.

 

[Justice1337]

Your opening BO in cap needs some work, but I can't offer any specifics because it's situational. Personally, I find it's best to build Worker second when Mining luxuries are around. If I'm in Liberty, I will go Collective Rule first with mining luxes. You also want to fit a Granary in there somewhere, possibly as early as third build if you have Deer/Wheat/Bananas nearby. This gets you to higher pop sooner, which lets you work more production tiles, which leads to faster Settlers, faster cities, and so on.

Otherwise, don't count on the CB rush. If you have enough space to expand to your happiness limit, do that instead. If you don't have enough space, you'll probably be DoW'd by around T40, in which case your CB rush will work as the AI throws units against you cities. Either way, your goal is to get multiple cities.

 

[glory7]

check my recent reply at Moriarte's thread. Getting free settler policy is usually better.

And no barrack for sure.

 

[stii]

Ok so everyone hates barrack guess I'll stop building that

The situation I'm looking at is one where the AI is a bit close and you only have space for 3/4 cities. So in the situation I feel like I have to attack someone or just get squeezed out.

 

[banker247]

agree with glory - since taking his advice my new benchmark is 8+ CB's 1 spear and 3-4 cities by turn 60 using liberty opener, I however get the worker first then move to settler. seem to be able to do this on most starts using America, I play immortal/pangea/standard

the key to getting this to work is growing your cap rapidly - my first worker makes farms then I use Americas 50% off to buy the BEST tiles and my cap flourishes easily able to produce the needed army, sometimes I even have time to throw in a library in there whilst hitting construction.

you can really do this with most starts I havn't had a problem yet, what I did to learn it was just play to turn 60 see where i'm at then restart over and over until I got a hang of the timings - once you figure out the maths on your initial city tiles its very easy to achieve, I typically get 10CBs marching @ the enemy by 60ish

steamrolling 1-2 AI's prior to turn 100 is kinda easy right now, what I am having issues with though now is controlling happiness and GNP - any advice there?

 

[Vintage Port]

Ok so everyone hates barrack guess I'll stop building that

The situation I'm looking at is one where the AI is a bit close and you only have space for 3/4 cities. So in the situation I feel like I have to attack someone or just get squeezed out.

I don't think anyone is not saying attack early as most of the top players definitely take over a capital or two as soon as possible. Raise the crappy cities, keep the capital and replant where/when necessary. Wiping out your early neighbour is always a good suggestion.

As for barracks, many will build them just not really early. There is usually too many things to get out (libraries, granaries, units, workers, settlers, monuments, maybe shrines) that it is tough to squeeze in a barracks.

If I end up with one city where I will be pumping out my main units mid game I usually build one and maybe an armory if time permits.

 

[Deau]

Agreed with most ideas shared in other replies. Opener build needs to be reviewed, if you have a very close immediate neighbor, I highly recommend DoWing between turns 5-20 to steal a worker and leave the war open. Not only will they waste a few units on your capital with little harm (rarely bringing more than 3-4 units at once) but the stolen worker slows their start making it much easier to deliver the first war properly.

I often skip BW if my first target AI isn't on a hill and SPed into tradition because the warrior can survive city+cb attack outside that scope and since a city with 0 health can be captured by a melee with 1 health (and the melee will survive, obviously). I then generally shoot for horses slightly faster with this approach and often delay BW until after education. This has the additional effect of significantly helping with all of the science quests from CSs in turns 80-130 range.

My typical early rush build opener is
scout -> monument (unless culture ruin + trad then I go 2 scouts) -> granary (rush buy shrine if there is a viable faith gen pantheon for my starting loc otherwise save for settler) -> archer spam. / sometime through rush-buy a settler.

Then again, I will almost always have stolen 1-2 workers from that early DoWed neighbor.


*EDIT* If my first target neighbor is all on flat lands, I delay the rush by ~15 turns and instead build ToA right out of the granary. It has proven many times to be my secret to god mode science from education and on.

 

[stii]

Seems very reasonable I will give this a try, thanks for all the advice.

One minor point seems like you'd be better off buying granary and building shrine as shrine is the most expensive rush % by quite a lot.

 

[Falconiano]

scout,monument,shrine,settler,settler,barracks, archerx5, spearmanx2.

You build both a monument and settlers, how is it?
If you go Tradition you don't need monument, if you go Liberty you don't need settlers (first free, second/third you buy).

Try the following.
If you're a religion-allowing civ:
Scout, Shrine, Archer x3-4, Gran, Lib, Archer x3-4.
Else:
Scout, Gran, Archer x3-4, Lib, Archer x3-4.

 

[Deau]

Seems very reasonable I will give this a try, thanks for all the advice.

One minor point seems like you'd be better off buying granary and building shrine as shrine is the most expensive rush % by quite a lot.

The net difference in 35g. Shrine is 50g per 8 hammers, at that rate, granary would be 375. There are 2 primary reasons why you want to rush buy the shrine and build the granary and not the other way around.

You will come by 250g much earlier since most gold comes from meeting CSs/ruins/sold embassies and there's usually a break somewhere between 150-250g depending on your ruin luck where most CSs are not only 15g per, they have mostly been met/are miles away etc. etc.

The main reason however, is because rush buying the shrine should always lead to an earlier time for it to be put online which can make as huge a difference as 20 turns to pantheon, getting or losing a game breaking faith generator pantheon and thus the religion that comes along.

Moreover (and I believe this only applies to deity), you can only pop a faith ruin once you have a faith per turn output. Thus, rush-buying the shrine allows you lucky 20, 30 or 60 faith ruins significantly enhancing your game. It's brutal to get stone circle or DF on deity and this is one way to really improve your success rate.

You build both a monument and settlers, how is it?
If you go Tradition you don't need monument, if you go Liberty you don't need settlers (first free, second/third you buy).

Try the following.
If you're a religion-allowing civ:
Scout, Shrine, Archer x3-4, Gran, Lib, Archer x3-4.
Else:
Scout, Gran, Archer x3-4, Lib, Archer x3-4.

If your neighbor is close enough, it's generally best not to build a settler. The growth half hinders your production to the point where you will get fewer or at best the same number of archers out excepted you will delay construction more. There are exceptions like if your neighbors are too far out but I generally simply try to sell embassy ASAP so that the said neighbor expands towards my borders making a weaker first city to capture and thus an easier mean to wipe more of his troops before hitting the capital.

In fact, if you play tradition, it's generally best never to hard build settler unless you do so during negative happiness to use at a later point in time. For liberty, the production bonus cuts a few turns off and justifies allocating the 500g somewhere else. Again, the only exception is if delivery time will make or break an outstanding settling location but you can always just take it through war anyway with an early rush strategy so it's best not to.

 

[The Pilgrim]

The main reason however, is because rush buying the shrine should always lead to an earlier time for it to be put online which can make as huge a difference as 20 turns to pantheon, getting or losing a game breaking faith generator pantheon and thus the religion that comes along.

I agree with this. If I want to get a shrine, I prefer to buy it asap. One less archer but for defense you don't need too many.

Moreover (and I believe this only applies to deity), you can only pop a faith ruin once you have a faith per turn output. Thus, rush-buying the shrine allows you lucky 20, 30 or 60 faith ruins significantly enhancing your game. It's brutal to get stone circle or DF on deity and this is one way to really improve your success rate.

Seriously? Never heard of this. Can anyone confirm? I think I had faith ruin without generating any faith at all, but I can be wrong.

And yeah, up until artillery I hate barracks and don't bother with BW before I'm ready to get workshops online.

 

[Viperswhip]

Just last night the very second ruin I rolled over popped 60 Faith and I hadn't even finished building my scout. I got my pick of Pantheons and had 10/x sitting there until I built my shrine, which I didn't prioritize after that.

 

[Deau]

Seriously? Never heard of this. Can anyone confirm? I think I had faith ruin without generating any faith at all, but I can be wrong.

This is from my personal experience, it is not from source code. However, I recall being baffled by picking 20faith and 60fatih ruins super early the first few times I played below deity to comment in certain threads in the forums. It hit me so hard that I began to pay close attention afterwards and to this day, I have yet to pick a faith ruin on deity prior to building shrine or Stonehenge and it's definitely not for lack of playing, even replaying starts often when trying to do hard tuning on some strats.

I've also obviously noticed a clear increase in the number of faith ruins I picked up when starting to hard build/rush buy the shrine first thing upon pottery.

 

[Deau]

So I happened to have been wanting to shoot for a double founder belief combo with Byzantium on deity lately and the start I picked up looked great for strong religion even though it was arguably only an average start (great food but awful production).

There is a series of SS below that may be worthwhile for this thread. I was looking for a good 2nd city location for liberty and couldn't find one (I don't plant my first 3 cities without at least river tiles nearby so that they are self sufficient for gold). Luckily however, I had a neighbor 6 tiles away (Shongai). Thus, I knew I'd be going for a quick CB rush and waited a few turns near his borders to early DoW and steal worker. This has the double effect that by the time you finish the war if you do without wiping the enemy, that the DoW diplo penalty is almost gone so you are good to go, even for somewhat peaceful game.

However, since Shongai had that great all flatlands start, he was such an easy target that I just went on and expanded through him. Saw that Ghandi was in the exact same situation and he already was dominating religion hard as hell so I kept on moving towards him.

With an extremely simple opener strategy of
monument -> granary -> archer spam
pottery -> archery -> lux tech -> construction

I got to take 6 cities among which were 2 capitals (and war elephants are actually painful to fight against so don't fool yourself that Ghandi is a joke -_-).


This strat held because the neighbor was super close, if he's slightly further away you will usually want to get that 2nd city out from liberty to close the gap a bit and upgrade in your 2nd city territory to get the rush out faster - or just to get it to grow earlier for science because construction rush delays NC a lot for a single city opener.

I seriously prefer 2 city liberty rush or, as was in this above game, one city trad rush. This way you can leave captured cities as puppets until NC is out and don't have to worry about that last city you planted or lack of growth of capital weakening NC by a large margin.

In this very game, I regret not going liberty just because I struggled for happiness all along. It must be the first time ever that I see all 5 AIs actually aggressively spreading their religion.

Anyway all this to say, very generic simple opener can work great, all you need is a good flatlands target.

I made it to #1 in literature around turn 120 and kept it through until this last autosave. Turn to victory will be awful from still having to chose my VC -_- and that the religion spread worked very poorly and forced me to delay some wars for happiness.

Spoiler :

 

[Falconiano]

You can get the faith ruins without having any faith generators.
I just got this in my last game (+50 faith ruin) without having anything related to faith in that moment.
The code shows no requirements for faith goody huts either.

Btw I would have taken Vija instead of Delhi.
Reasons:
1) Vija had 2 silk luxies, one of which you could have traded for luxies/cash
2) Vija also has unimproved furs for more smiles
3) Vija is coastal; on top of the coastal benefits, you could have tried a sea-snatch later for easier grabbing of Delhi.
4) Vija easier to re-grow or raze-and-rebuild due to weaths/fish
5) Why taking a capital so early, let them build some wonders in it first

 

[Maxym]

He already built them, you can see the pyramids, and your first four points contradict each other, why raze if it's sooo good. And you need to take all caps asap, and keep rolling if you want to finish before launch, I assume all his VC are on

I did take a screen of faith ruin before any faith generation in my last game as Persia on deity marathon and it must have been just a long streak of bad luck for you.