Deity Introduction Guide for Julius Ceasar

[HawkeyeGS]

I think the whole anarchy things needs to be fixed in a patch. The problem is that as game speed gets slower (epic and marathon) the turns for anarchy increase but the turns required to wait between civic swaps sttays the same. The number of turns you have to wait inbetween each swap needs to be increased for slower game settings. It is an interesting stratagy though. I just don't think it is fully legit as if you think about it could a government really co-ordinate armies if it doesn't exist. At best you would have one faction saying march East and another faction saaying march West. Thats real anarchy for ya.

Anyway it is good to see some people out there with some principals. Even though you are 'liberating' the AIs people you are not killing them. I realise it is only a game and that the different coloured faces don't have feelings but I try to encourage everyone to play a few games now and then as if it was completely real. It puts a real spin on the game and can even lead to discoveries of new stratagies (ignored for their apparent weakeness) which can then be applied to a game that is treated as a game.

Hawkeye

 

[HawkeyeGS]

I hate people that go on about violece in PC games. There are many violent games out now such as Civ that do have a sutle anti-war message in them. Just in having the non-war victory conditions such as space race and culture. The only games I think are in any way bad are ones such as medal of honour that over glorify events such as D-Day.

 

[Grimwulf]

First time poster. I rarely have problems with gaming, but civ 4 is tough at diety, so I came here to discuss strategy.

This is a great article Moonsinger. I tried your strat, but ran into some problems. I know it will work, but it hasn'y for me yet. I am able to follow the advice well until I get to this part:

"* Step #15: Declare war and start eliminating your nearest civ. Unless they have axemans (they rarely do at this point)"

Here is where I have the first problem. There is no way possible to research all the way to iron without the other civs having axemen. As soon as I attack...or most likely when I get attacked with only 6 or 7 Praetoreans built spread over 4 cities I usually face a stack of 2-3 archers, 3-4 spearmen, and 4-8 axemen coming at me. If I focus my forces at some sort of choke point the AI sends chariots to destroy my economy and cut my roads. The only thing I have been able to do is find a jungle covered hill to sit on and pounce on stacks of invaders when they try to bypass it in the open. Problem is a Praetorean does not win every battle with axemen, swordsmen, or even archers.

"* Step #15: If your citizens complain, ignore them. If your enemy begs for peace, ignore them. Keeps the war going until they are eliminated? In the mean time, continue to rush more praetorians by chopping down the forests. If you run out of your own forests, move to the new recently captured city forests."

Here is the second problem. I have chopped every forest down by this point. And the city I managed to capture had no forests either. The AI is busy improving terrain faster than me. So I am left with a city draining my economy with no culture and not producing much of anything except inflation. There is very little forest left by this point so the strategy falls apart and the other civs race ahead in tech while I struggle with 10-20% research rate and fall further and further behind.

 

[The-Hawk]

I just decided to seriously give Civ4 a try about 10 days ago. At the moment, I'm still new at this game.

10 days? new to the game?

Well, I don't know if this is an "exploit" or not. But I do know brilliance when I see it. Anyone who can navigate through the complexity of a game like this and create a novel winning strategy in such a short time is brilliant.

I am truly impressed...

 

[Moonsinger]

Here is where I have the first problem. There is no way possible to research all the way to iron without the other civs having axemen. As soon as I attack...or most likely when I get attacked with only 6 or 7 Praetoreans built spread over 4 cities I usually face a stack of 2-3 archers, 3-4 spearmen, and 4-8 axemen coming at me. If I focus my forces at some sort of choke point the AI sends chariots to destroy my economy and cut my roads. The only thing I have been able to do is find a jungle covered hill to sit on and pounce on stacks of invaders when they try to bypass it in the open. Problem is a Praetorean does not win every battle with axemen, swordsmen, or even archers.

Praetorean vs Axeman is no good! Most of the time, the Praetorean would have much less than 50% chance of winning. Since they have both axemen and chariots, I recommend rushing some axemen and spearman for escorting your stack of Praetoreans.

Here is the second problem. I have chopped every forest down by this point. And the city I managed to capture had no forests either. The AI is busy improving terrain faster than me. So I am left with a city draining my economy with no culture and not producing much of anything except inflation. There is very little forest left by this point so the strategy falls apart and the other civs race ahead in tech while I struggle with 10-20% research rate and fall further and further behind.

May I ask what map size are you playing? And what year did you start the war? Try to go to war sooner if you can. Don't wait too long because there won't be much forests left. You may also face a lot of axemen and horse archers at the later day. I also recommend using the number of civs as recommend at the HoF forum here. If there are too many civs on the map, they would quickly run out of room to expand; therefore, instead of building settler, they would focus on improving their land. Usually on a tiny map, I play against 2 AI civs; 3 for the small map, 4 for the standard map, and 5 for the large map.

 

[Andrei_V]

Just managed to win a Deity game on a small Pangaea against 3 AI opponents. I did not exploit the anarchy, but I did raze most of the cities. Thanks, Moonsinger, excellent idea, I did enjoy the game winning with 90K score.

At first, I faced plenty of axemen, but I managed to quickly locate and destroy enemy's copper mines. The rest was just to avoid attacking axemen, and let them to attack themselves. When they do, they sometimes win, sometimes lose. If they lose, my damaged praetorians are covered by other healthy units in the stack.

Quite a problem was with the chariots, they used to sneak to my territory, destroy mines and roads, and kill workers. They usually come in pairs, and if I attack one, and I win, my unit is damaged, and the other chariot kills it. Finally I solved this problem also, by not attacking chariots right away, but waiting for them to go deep inside my territory. Then I could kill them safely.

 

[Grimwulf]

First, thanks for taking the time to respond. I appreciate it.

"Praetorean vs Axeman is no good! Most of the time, the Praetorean would have much less than 50% chance of winning. Since they have both axemen and chariots, I recommend rushing some axemen and spearman for escorting your stack of Praetoreans."

There are no trees left to rush anything. But as you say it is about 50/50 or so chance. On the slowest game speed it takes about 6 turns in my capital to produce one, but from my furthest city it takes 25 turns. I only had 4 total cities.

"May I ask what map size are you playing? And what year did you start the war? Try to go to war sooner if you can. Don't wait too long because there won't be much forests left. You may also face a lot of axemen and horse archers at the later day. I also recommend using the number of civs as recommend at the HoF forum here. If there are too many civs on the map, they would quickly run out of room to expand; therefore, instead of building settler, they would focus on improving their land. Usually on a tiny map, I play against 2 AI civs; 3 for the small map, 4 for the standard map, and 5 for the large map."

Playing a small map with 4 opponents. I didn't start the war though. I got attacked very early in the game, I think I had just 6 Praetoreans built and two warriors, but all 4 cities were producing Praetoreans. I don't recall the exact date, but the AI had not built the pyramids yet or it had just built them. I was shuffling the two warriors to the far side of my land and pooling the Praetoreans in the center of the area where I had three civs bordering me. The AI sent a stack of 2 archers, 3 spearmen, and 5 axemen straight at my capitol. There was a jungle hill they had to march around to get to it so I sent the 4 Praetoreans I had stacked to the hill and with roads pulled the unit out of my capitol to join them. The AI attacked this stack with his axemen but kept marching out into the plains tile with his spearmen and archers. I won all 5 battles with the plus 75% I had to defense. The next turn I promoted all my units to level 2 which healed some damage and attacked at partial strength. Even with the level 2 promotions I still lost 2 out of 5 Praetoreans fighting the spearmen and archers, but my capital produced a Praetorean on the next round and the first enemy wave got smashed. The second turn of battle the AI also showed up with two other stacks one had just 2 archers and the other a lone chariot going after my one source of iron. The AI also sent small groups of swordsmen at me alone or in pairs. If I am able to research iron working the AI can easily do it, and it did. All in all, there was a large delay between the first wave and the scattered units the AI sent. Some of my Praetoreans were built during this time and all sent to the front. I sent the warriors to the front as well. By advancing slowly onto defensive terrain only with cleared areas to the sides where I knew the AI had to go thru to get at my land I was able to get a few of the AI's roads cut. It took quite a few turns, but I turned the tide and managed to take a city then another. This ruined my research and sent me negative income. I had units on the map, but not enough to sustain war, so I made peace. I moved out of last place though and I wanted to save killing this guy until I could get techs out of him. Problem was though, I was not able to recover enough to quickly mount an offense. Getting attacked before I was ready killed me, so there was a long dely before I could get to battle number two.

I actually attacked the biggest civ just before AD with the 12 Praetoreans you suggested. It took that long to build that many with no trees around. This was my second war. What little research I was getting I made a line for alphabets I could demand techs if I won. I eliminated the top civ and captured the pyramids, but it took me way too long. I lost a huge stack of units and faced catapaults, it was only a steady stream of fresh units and clinging to defensive terrain that even allowed me a win, that and this civ had no horses. I did manage to end up with 2 level 5 units and 3 level 4 units after it was done, but the other two civs I have not fought are running away with the game.

That brings me up to now. I have all my units to the one side of my land where I just killed off my first opponent and a third civ has just declared war on me. He has knights, crossbowmen, and macemen in a stack of about 15 units. After barely scrapping by against axemen and catapaults I do not know how I will face this new threat. I milked 3 techs just before I made the final kill on the civ I just eliminated, but my best unit is a longbow.

This is when I came here for advice. The AIs have not warred each other at all. Only me. I researched straight for iron, rushed as many UUs as I could, defended myself, eliminated a civ, but I am now out of position with an inferior army, but with lots of promotions, and a large army of sophisticated units in my land.

I guess my biggest question at this point is have you really been fast enough to get to iron, produce 12 UUs and beat the AI to having axemen when you attack? Do I need to start over and try again until I get a map full of forest or do you think the strat is salvagable under a more general condition?

Thanks for your time. It is the weekend and I will see if I can fight it out. If not I restart.

 

[Andrei_V]

May I suggest a few ideas?

The AI sent a stack of 2 archers, 3 spearmen, and 5 axemen straight at my capitol. There was a jungle hill they had to march around to get to it so I sent the 4 Praetoreans I had stacked to the hill and with roads pulled the unit out of my capitol to join them.

In this case you do not need to send your Praetorians to defend the jungle, it should be a lot better to concentrate them in your capital. With such a large stack the AI would surely attack your capital with a few units, and lose most (maybe even all) of them.

The rest would either retreat or (more likely) go around your capital to destroy your mines and kill workers. Then you can attack, and if successful, retreat the damaged unit to the capital. Of course, you need roads all around your cities.

The AI attacked this stack with his axemen but kept marching out into the plains tile with his spearmen and archers. I won all 5 battles with the plus 75% I had to defense. The next turn I promoted all my units to level 2 which healed some damage and attacked at partial strength.

I think attacking with damaged units was a bad idea. You should have retreated them to the nearest city, and wait until they are completely healed. Especially if you were expecting some new units on the next turn.

my capital produced a Praetorean on the next round and the first enemy wave got smashed.

You could attack with the new unit first (and with some luck get more promotions), and wait a little until your veterans are healed more. There is not too much damage actually that the enemy can cause to your infrastructure in 1 or 2 turns. The worst is probably to destroy a road connecting your cities, then you can lose access to iron in some cities. (A good idea would be to connect them with a double road).

The only valuable improvement on your land is actually the iron mine, but it is usually enough to protect it with an axeman and one or two Praetorians. (In my game, it was quite a fun to watch how the enemy gets smashed, desperately trying to attack them.)

The AI also sent small groups of swordsmen at me alone or in pairs.

Do not send your troops against them, wait until they come to you. Take advantage of the roads, on your territory you can move your troops twice as fast, provided that you have roads.

Scattered single Praetorians are an easy prey even for chariots. If you really really need to protect something (like workers chopping forest) against small wandering stacks, send a stack of two praetorians. In this case, if the first praetorian attacks and gets damaged, the second one can cover it while healing. This way you can even get some benefit on promotions.

Also, try to build less cities. More cities - more civic upkeep, which means more time in discovering iron, and less units you can build before you hit negative balance. I think two cities is more than enough, if you discover iron near one of them, don't even bother to build a third city.

 

[Zombie69]

"Praetorean vs Axeman is no good! Most of the time, the Praetorean would have much less than 50% chance of winning. Since they have both axemen and chariots, I recommend rushing some axemen and spearman for escorting your stack of Praetoreans."

There are no trees left to rush anything.

The article said you should make axemen before you hook up iron and start producing praetorians. Doing this, you should have 3-4 axemen ready to counter the opponent's axemen.

The real counter to axemen is horse archers, but you probably don't have the technology to make them, and you said yourself that you don't have the production either.

 

[Ordokios]

Great Strategy!

I won my first Deity game today (and my second too).

The starting location is realy important. Best is, if you are at the coast, so you can keep your back free. Flood Plains or some food goodies and hills are realy important too.

The last game I did was small with 2 opponents (random pick): Isabella and some Mongol guy.

Most of the time my cities were emty.. lol, at the end, even my capital was conquered.. I didm't realy care.. sent one of my pretorian stacks there and got it back ^^

So thank you. I got a lot of insight in the game mechanics of the early game and the difficuly level.

Score was about 158k. The movie at the end of this victory type is nice

 

[Moonsinger]

Playing a small map with 4 opponents. I didn't start the war though. I got attacked very early in the game, I think I had just 6 Praetoreans built and two warriors, but all 4 cities were producing Praetoreans.

My take on this game is as follows...the aggressive civs are like the wolves and the peaceful/spirtual civs are like the sheeps. In this case, you are the wolf (aggressive and expansive) against a whole world full of sheeps. How can you possibly loss? When I started this thread, I fear that someone will laugh at me for exploiting those peaceful AIs. Since my focus on this thread is about winning a first Deity game, I don't mind playing stacking the odd in my favor a little bit by picking peaceful civs as my opponents. I think the only time I could loss this game is when I play against some other wolf that would most likely declare war on me before you have a chance to build up my force. It seems to make sense...the wolf is very territorial; therefore, it would most likely attack other weak wolf before focusing on the surrouding sheeps. Therefore, please try not to pick Genghis Khan, Tokugawa, Huayan, or Montezuma in your first Deity game.

I decided to review all of the Deity games I have played so far (guiding Ceasar, Catherine, Washington, and Elizabeth), I see that none of the AI has ever declared war on me. I guess...it probably is because I was playing against peaceful AIs. I think you should try again...this time, 3 AIs on a small map (pick Washington, Isabella, and Gandhi as your opponents). A hour ago, I started another game. I played as Catherine and my starting possition was very poor. I had very few forests to chop but had no problem in building up my force. According to my scouts (I have open border with everyone), my nearest civ (Issabella) has a couple swordmans, a lot of archers and chariots. Egypt has a lot of axemens and America has about 4 axemans. If you want to take a look, here is my save. Hint: by the time, I reach the Egyptian border, I probably have horse archers by then; therefore, have no fear of her horse of axemans.

 

[Moonsinger]

Great Strategy!

I won my first Deity game today (and my second too).

The starting location is realy important. Best is, if you are at the coast, so you can keep your back free. Flood Plains or some food goodies and hills are realy important too.

The last game I did was small with 2 opponents (random pick): Isabella and some Mongol guy.

Most of the time my cities were emty.. lol, at the end, even my capital was conquered.. I didm't realy care.. sent one of my pretorian stacks there and got it back ^^

So thank you. I got a lot of insight in the game mechanics of the early game and the difficuly level.

Score was about 158k. The movie at the end of this victory type is nice

Congrats!

 

[Grimwulf]

"The article said you should make axemen before you hook up iron and start producing praetorians. Doing this, you should have 3-4 axemen ready to counter the opponent's axemen."

There was no copper. Since I did not have archery the only unit I could make was warrior. I did the best I could with the map I had. As instructed I pre chopped as much forest as I could.

"Therefore, please try not to pick Genghis Khan, Tokugawa, Huayan, or Montezuma in your first Deity game."

I didn't. Washington attacked me. I think the strat will work great if you have plenty of trees. I had desert to the north and jungle to the south. I got killed and decided to give it a rest. Thanks for your time, though.

 

[Zombie69]

This sucks. Sorry about that.

 

[Moonsinger]

I didn't. Washington attacked me. I think the strat will work great if you have plenty of trees. I had desert to the north and jungle to the south. I got killed and decided to give it a rest. Thanks for your time, though.

Just try again! May be next time you will have both copper and iron near by.

 

[·Imhotep·]

Since I'm not a really great player (having problems to squeeze out wins even on Noble) - but nevertheless a ambitious one - I tried this strategy on a Noble game and made some adjustments, because map type and game speed suggested that the strategy fully transported to my game wouldn't work.

I was playing on a Custom Continents map, so therefore I built the Pyramids myself (luckily having a stone resource at hand) for running Representation early and therefore boosting research and happiness a bit. So I was only able to start cranking out Praetorians with delay, but that was not bad anyway, since I had to hook up Iron before - and that took a while. Then I was building a mass of Praetorians - when I finally attacked Mansa he had 25 of them to deal with. He couldn't withstand, of course. Next victim was Kublai Khan. I haven't destroyed him wholly yet, but my realm has grown from 2 cities to a recent 13.

The difficulty in playing this strategy on Standard game speed is the shortened span of Anarchy when changing civics. 1 turn doesn't help you much. So I was desperately trying to research Civil Service for courthouses and a Forbidden Palace. It was really scaring - I had 13 cities and was making -30 gpt at 0% research. I was just clinging to the loot I gathered from conquering cities, that saved my game. At one point my treasure was so low that 2 Praetorians got disbanded - but the other 30 could capture another city, the money from it letting me finish Civil Service research. Then I set up a lot of courthouses and finally a Forbidden Palace - and now I can run 60% research and still get +1 gpt even without having a shrine yet. I'm sure I'll defeat my opponents on my continent easily from now on since it is still a long way for the AI to Gunpowder.

I'm sure this wouldn't work on Prince or Monarch, not to speak of Deity. The Praetorian is way overpowered, since it will outmatch almost any unit until the Musketman appears. And even then you can do a lot with a bunch of Praetorians and some Catapults. The Rifleman finally ends Praetorian nightmares, but that is rather a late game tech. I think it is not this good that unique units are so unbalanced. Take the Cossak - overpowered too, I think, but it cannot dominate in such a manner because in most cases Riflemen are available at the Cossak's appearance.

Finally: Nice idea, Moonsinger ! Great plan, great work !

Regards,

Lord Timon

 

[SpikeSpy]

Hey Moonsinger. Impressive strat, thanks for sharing. Early on in the thread the suggestion was made to conquer an entire continent. Someone suggested you gift cities to AI for safe keeping, which as was explained will not work. HOWEVER there is another AI that is more than happy to safekeep cities for you and thats your friendly neighborhood barbarians.

Now I have only played this strategy on Immortal Huge map. 10 AI all settings normal +no cheating. You can find this game of mine in the HoF. It seems to work fine so I Imagine that it will hold up on Diety. Use your strategy and raze cities or leave them undefended, barbarians will take them over/build in its place in no time. If you raze/kill enough AI's on your continent the barbarians should get quite a large stronghold in the void your troops leave behind, thus stopping any other AI from claiming that land. Once all the AI's on your continent are dead you can slowly expand outward from your capitol and reclaim land from the barbarians as much as your economy allows. Everyone is always hating on the barbarians but they may turn out to be your greatest ally! They certainly proved usefull in my games so far! Anyway I'll leave you to play with this for a bit, enjoy!

 

[Mahatmajon]

Optional check boxes: No barbarian
Step #6: Once your city has grown to size 3, chop more forests to rush at least 3 more workers and 2 settlers. When chopping down the forests, I usually chop the furthest ones first. I recommend chopping the forests near the AI border first.

I haven't made it through the whole thread, but 'no barbarians' and 'chop the furthest forest first' isn't civ IMO...and lowers the difficulty of Diety tremendously. Being able to build as many workers as you want without fear of barbarians and sending them off to far away lands to deforest the AI lands & borders is an exploit, not a strategy.

If there are some less abusive game stories on page 3 or 4 of this thread congratulations. Kudos for exploiting no barbarians, chopping far away lands, & anarchy as well. It's just not civ to me.

 

[walkerjks]

I haven't made it through the whole thread, but 'no barbarians' and 'chop the furthest forest first' isn't civ IMO...and lowers the difficulty of Diety tremendously.

Agreed.

Being able to build as many workers as you want without fear of barbarians and sending them off to far away lands to deforest the AI lands & borders is an exploit, not a strategy.

If there are some less abusive game stories on page 3 or 4 of this thread congratulations. Kudos for exploiting no barbarians, chopping far away lands, & anarchy as well.

Exploit is awfully strong. The Beta Hall of Fame rules clearly allow no barbarians. Now since you are looking for the fastest wins or the highest scores within the Hall of Fame rules, how exactly is it an exploit to game the system to maximize your score or win date?

It's just not civ to me.

It's definitely civ, just a sillier version of civ. Playing on settler, for example, is still definitely civ. But there's no question it's a ludicrously easy version of civ.

 

[Mahatmajon]

Exploit is awfully strong. The Beta Hall of Fame rules clearly allow no barbarians. Now since you are looking for the fastest wins or the highest scores within the Hall of Fame rules, how exactly is it an exploit to game the system to maximize your score or win date?

Point noted. To be honest I don't think I've ever gone to the HOF page.