Deity keeps kicking my butt

[jimbob]

I can beat every level. I never seem to have a problem with it. Everytime I try Deity, the ai gets like space race when I'm pumping out rifleman and so on. I love patting myself on the back for pumping out 5 or 6 cities quickly just to find out my neigbor has twice as much.

My strategy has been for the most part warlike. I build half a dozen cities, attack my closest neighbor (neighbors), sue for peace and so on. Seems to work pretty good except when I play the level from hell.

When I play Deity, I can't seem to do this. I pump out a bunch of military, ai has twice the military (and cities so on). I've tried non aggresive strategies, those games ended very quickly.

What would be some first priorities on a standard map for an early warlike strategy? I always play continents (or lots of land), I never go anywhere with the game when I'm stuck on an island by myself. I've read through the war academy (3 or 4 times), guess I just need a few more bones thrown at me.

Thanks,

Jim Bob

 

[No.Dice]

Theres probably a lot of people more able to answer this, but i'll try.

Deity isn't so much civ anymore as it is taking advantage of every exploit. The higher the difficulty, the more one-dimensional the game becomes.

In 1.16 you could just tech broker your way into the middle ages, once you have chivalry, buy a few alliances against a neighbor and do some serious land grabbing.

The current patch makes things much harder. If you want to wage an effective early war, a dense build or ICS is pretty much your only option. Your cities will be spaced 1-2 squares apart, maximizing early production and minimizing corruption. I haven't tried any pop-rushing in 1.17, but i can't think of any reason why joining workers to your town prior to pop-rushing wouldn't work.

You sacrifice late game production by banking on that you'll have the majority of your enemies destroyed by then. Basically, each city produces a settler as soon as it reaches size three.

Since a big part of your power on the histograph is judged by number of cities, you'll be able to renogiate peace treaties often, peacefully taking some smaller cities from your rivals. Start diplomacy, go into active, and select peace treaty. This is risky to perform on the top 3-4 civs. Doesn't do very much for your reputation either.

Unfortunatly i find luck to be a big factor, a lousy starting spot or getting a few bad rolls on early battles, is not very forgiving.

Surviving the early game is whats tough, once into the late middle-early industrial ages, you can usually take it from there, as the AI's bonuses wear down after the landgrabbing is over.

Warmongering is the only option at higher levels, unless you want to swallow your pride and give in to every threat for the first 2 ages. Personally, i'm way too stubborn for that.

 

[jimbob]

Originally posted by No.Dice


Warmongering is the only option at higher levels, unless you want to swallow your pride and give in to every threat for the first 2 ages. Personally, i'm way too stubborn for that.

I totally agree with that. I'm stubborn too. Guess that's why I'm always in war (especially at the start of the game). Don't mind that so much though.

I like the idea of planting cities closer together. I seen that in a few strats, never tried it. Will next game (in a few minutes).

This game makes me so humbled. I use to be able to kick butt on alien crossfire on transcend level playing the believers every time. Civ2, easy. Then civ3 comes along .....

 

[Dr HacknSlash]

Originally posted by No.Dice
Unfortunatly i find luck to be a big factor, a lousy starting spot or getting a few bad rolls on early battles, is not very forgiving.

Having the perfect starting position has been the only way I've found as well. But I'm not a great player, nor that patient.

I won one game as Aztecs by playing on a small map. I re-started until I could put my capital in a garden spot. Then if you time it right, you can crank out one jaguar warrior per turn during your Golden Age. I made serious land acquisitions this way early on, and after that the game went from impossible to just really hard.

I agree this is wacko hard compared to Civ2. Never heard of alien crossfire...