Sorry uberfish, but I think you're wrong. The AI expands at about triple your pace on deity. On a standard map you can box them off and leave some areas to backfill with cities. That's virtually impossible on a huge map so the AI's will have triple your empire size when expansion is done. That's game over right there.
Deity Learning Curve
- Thread starter ProbStat
- Start date
uberfish said:
What victory did you achieve? Cultural or Diplomacy? Were barbs on? Which leaders did you get dealt?
I too have one a couple times at Deity on a standard pangea set-up, but it was only when I was dealt (or chose) Huayna, stone in my fat cross, and favorable opponents (not multiple aggressives). And even then, I can only win with cultural.
I guess I am saying I would very much like to imagine that all victory types are available on Deity, but I really really doubt it (assuming standard settings and map). I think that only the two victory types that can be achieved with a backwards tech level (cultural and diplomacy) are possible at Deity on standard or above maps and standard/random settings (in general).
Shillen said:
Box them off? How can you do that unless you are fortunate enough to have a peninsula? It's more likely that you might have a geographical choke that you can block off to reserve space for later on a larger map.
The AI is also triple your empire size on standard when expansion is done, and you have to fight then if you're not going for pure cultural plan. The idea is to try and catch a neighbour while it's still on the tail end of its expansion and has been producing settlers rather than military and doesn't have an offensive stack built up. Once you equalize in size, desperately try and vertical research (lightbulbing helps) and tech trade/instigate wars to catch up. I was able to win by space this way, but there are lots of things that can go wrong obviously.
ProbStat said:
Dude, if you're playing on Marathon you're supposed to get 60 hammers! Its tripled from the normal rate because everything costs 3 times as much on marathon.
As far as coming up with a peacful strategy to beat deity, I think you'll have a very hard time. Deity is easily beatable, but only really if everybody starts on the same land-mass, and you play with a civ that has a decent early UU. Going mongol (as you so nicely put it) with either the Incans, Romans, egyptians or Persians is probably the only "easy" way to beat deity.
I started out at deity difficulty as well, and got totally destroyed. The AI receives bonuses to virtually everything -- worker improvement speed, tech, etc. -- and gets a huge starting allotment of archers/settlers/workers.
As someone already posted, godonut's cultural strategy seems to be the only way to win without gaming the map settings, e.g. a tiny map with a single AI opponent. Incidentally, while godonut stresses the importance of stone, I don't think it's actually that important. The pyramids are very useful, no doubt, but it is not THAT hard to tech to democracy. And you can win without universal sufferage, if you plan ahead sufficiently by building temples/cathedrals.
The real key is obtaining 3 strong city locations (especially FOOD) at the start of the game. This is ridiculously hard on normal settings, given the deity land grab. I personally have only managed to win by going with a beginning game inca rush to secure workers/cities. (The ai is incredibly stupid and continues to build archers despite the quechna's 100% bonus.) I have a pre 1500 cultural victory on a map where I had been sealed off into a peninsula by Frederick, but promptly smashed him with a quechna rush, and kept borders closed so that I could take my time to develop the sealed off land.
Even if you build settler first, it's extremely hard otherwise to find 2 good city locations, much less 3.
As someone already posted, godonut's cultural strategy seems to be the only way to win without gaming the map settings, e.g. a tiny map with a single AI opponent. Incidentally, while godonut stresses the importance of stone, I don't think it's actually that important. The pyramids are very useful, no doubt, but it is not THAT hard to tech to democracy. And you can win without universal sufferage, if you plan ahead sufficiently by building temples/cathedrals.
The real key is obtaining 3 strong city locations (especially FOOD) at the start of the game. This is ridiculously hard on normal settings, given the deity land grab. I personally have only managed to win by going with a beginning game inca rush to secure workers/cities. (The ai is incredibly stupid and continues to build archers despite the quechna's 100% bonus.) I have a pre 1500 cultural victory on a map where I had been sealed off into a peninsula by Frederick, but promptly smashed him with a quechna rush, and kept borders closed so that I could take my time to develop the sealed off land.
Even if you build settler first, it's extremely hard otherwise to find 2 good city locations, much less 3.
Yes, the game does seem to have a propensity for starting you on South Georgia Island (an old whaling station near Antarctica) at deity level. I started a couple games as the Inca -- not my incliniation because the main Incan advantage (the Quechna) does not translate at all to other civs -- and had a series of amazingly bad beginning sites. I'm not sure if that isn't an extra feature in the game to prevent the Quechna rush strategy, but the Incan can probably get away without researching Archery, and the production cost of the Quechna as a decent defensive unit is probably without parallel.
I suppose my ultimate, ultimate aim is to be able to play a strong game in a multiplayer setting. It is easy enough in single player to decide, "No way am I going to win starting from Greenland; regenerate maps," but in multiplayer, probably every game someone is going to have a starting position that they can barely stand.
I suppose my ultimate, ultimate aim is to be able to play a strong game in a multiplayer setting. It is easy enough in single player to decide, "No way am I going to win starting from Greenland; regenerate maps," but in multiplayer, probably every game someone is going to have a starting position that they can barely stand.
Stolen Rutters
Deity
Impressive, starting on Deity, the level with the worst AI penalties, wow... I just worked up to win easily on Monarch, heading for Emperor once I log my final Monarch victory later today.
After getting destroyed when I first got the game, I backed off the higher levels too. I had to learn things like "Cottages are the new roads (from a commerce standpoint)", "Slavery is useful to multiply your productivity, but can kill development if used poorly", and "Specialize, specialize, specialize".
Hope you make it soon. Best of luck.
After getting destroyed when I first got the game, I backed off the higher levels too. I had to learn things like "Cottages are the new roads (from a commerce standpoint)", "Slavery is useful to multiply your productivity, but can kill development if used poorly", and "Specialize, specialize, specialize".
Hope you make it soon. Best of luck.
ProbStat said:
You should definitely not research archery. You can defend your cities against barbarians with quechnas. If you play a crowded map (small map with 5-6 ai players), the fog will dissipate quickly, and then it's just a matter of managing diplomacy so that you don't get invaded. If the fog is not dissipated, i highly suggest stationing quechnas on hills to minimize fogs. The deity barbarian rushes are absolutely nasty.
A cultural victory depends crucially on hitting alphabet, and maybe even writing, before the ai does. Indeed, given the severe penalties to happiness and health at deity, there is not much point in researching anything beyond pottery. Why research all these expensive techs when you don't have the happiness to use them in any event, or in the case of religious techs, when the ai will beat you to them in any event?
I make an exception if I am exceptionally endowed with a particular resource (3-4 animals in my first two cities -- animal husbandry; excellent lake tiles -- fishing; etc.), only because it will help me tech to alphabet faster. Aside from a possible pyramids rush, focus on finding sites that you can cottage spam. That means grassland tiles with food resources (so that you can eventually cottage the plains/hills as well)
River sites are especially nice, since with the financial trait, a cottaged tile instantly generates 3 commerce! Very important to prevent your early research from dragging to the point that you can't get to alphabet in a reasonable time frame.
As to multiplayer, there are some inter-related skills (e.g. spotting good early-game city sites, optimizing commerce/science), but most of the strats in SP are fatally deficient in multiplayer. The best prac for multiplayer is to play multiplayer. When you play SP, you get into the bad habit of relying on weaknesses in the AI.
To clarify, I don't generally play with the Incans, and I wouldn't focus on developing a strategy for playing them since it would likely have little value in a developing a strategy for other civilizations. But I do think that the Incans can, possibly uniquely, dispense with researching Archery even at Deity level.
I just played (and lost) a Deity-Huge-Random game with a Random leader, and got Gandhi, whom I had played a little before. I made extensive notes (22 pages) of my situations and actions, which I was sort of thinking of posting in a thread here to compare with what other people would do. I got toasted in that game mostly, I think, for picking a sub-optimal route toward Alphabet and tech trading (I mean, this choice was the main reason for my getting toasted outside of the level of difficulty I chose ...). I went after Writing before I had developed a commerce base, which I might have done at least partially by (a) researching Fishing first (I was on a coast) and (b) getting my Great Prophet (I'd founded Hinduism), building my Shrine, and spreading my religion as quickly as possible. Cottages at the Deity level are a tough call because the Barbarians will pillage them unless you defend them, and you'll probably want most of the units you can produce just to defend your cities themselves. (Although, if you are not near a coast, what choice besides Cottages do you have?)
Early commerce is the thing I think I most need to figure out right now. Replacing the old road commerce benefit with Cottages and requiring Worker actions (and usually tech advances, too) in order to build these and to tap into most of the resource-based commerce bonuses really delays the availability of commerce, as compared with older versions of Civ. And the maintenance cost change adds another critical demand for commerce. The combination of these two sets of changes seems to have made commerce the king of early game concerns (well, other than surviving the Barbarians, but I think I've mostly figured that out).
Just given the format of the general Civ franchise of games, there are two things that are very hard to do without: growth and research. Civ IV has, for the first time, tied the limits of growth to commerce, and research always has depended upon commerce. Somehow that knot needs to be untied if there is to be success at the higher levels.
I just played (and lost) a Deity-Huge-Random game with a Random leader, and got Gandhi, whom I had played a little before. I made extensive notes (22 pages) of my situations and actions, which I was sort of thinking of posting in a thread here to compare with what other people would do. I got toasted in that game mostly, I think, for picking a sub-optimal route toward Alphabet and tech trading (I mean, this choice was the main reason for my getting toasted outside of the level of difficulty I chose ...). I went after Writing before I had developed a commerce base, which I might have done at least partially by (a) researching Fishing first (I was on a coast) and (b) getting my Great Prophet (I'd founded Hinduism), building my Shrine, and spreading my religion as quickly as possible. Cottages at the Deity level are a tough call because the Barbarians will pillage them unless you defend them, and you'll probably want most of the units you can produce just to defend your cities themselves. (Although, if you are not near a coast, what choice besides Cottages do you have?)
Early commerce is the thing I think I most need to figure out right now. Replacing the old road commerce benefit with Cottages and requiring Worker actions (and usually tech advances, too) in order to build these and to tap into most of the resource-based commerce bonuses really delays the availability of commerce, as compared with older versions of Civ. And the maintenance cost change adds another critical demand for commerce. The combination of these two sets of changes seems to have made commerce the king of early game concerns (well, other than surviving the Barbarians, but I think I've mostly figured that out).
Just given the format of the general Civ franchise of games, there are two things that are very hard to do without: growth and research. Civ IV has, for the first time, tied the limits of growth to commerce, and research always has depended upon commerce. Somehow that knot needs to be untied if there is to be success at the higher levels.
Stolen Rutters
Deity
ProbStat said:
On the coast and you didn't go after fishing? Leverage your strengths. Barbs can't pillage sea squares! If you had a fish or crab in the fat cross, a workboat is killer! I haven't played Deity since I first got the game so I forgot about the Barbarian horde that just won't quit. I hear tales about it. My experience is currently Monarch.
My $0.02,
SR
Now Playing Warlords, Monarch, Genghis Khan, Standard size Terra, Normal speed... (forgot Terra was a step down from Continents). This level is getting way too easy.
Stolen Rutters said:
Yes, I started to feel very stupid about my omission of Fishing (I had two clam squares) as my quest for Writing dragged on and on and on. My only excuse is that one of my neighbors offered me Open Borders (guess what tech he had?) just three turns after I discovered my first tech, so I felt like I really needed to get on the Writing-Alphabet track as quickly as possible. Normally on the coast I would research Fishing first, but I decided to make a play for Hinduism (which I actually got), and then I was pretty sure I needed Archery as quickly as I could get it, and then I sure didn't want to be the last one to bring Alphabet to the party ...
As it turned out, when I (finally!) got Writing, Alphabet was going to take me so long to research that I went back for Fishing, and when I got that, Alphabet was still going to take me so long that I went back for The Wheel and then Pottery ... Writing on its own is an almost useless tech (other than for Libraries, the building of which is a hardship and the full use of which is an extravagence early in the game) and here I'd been sitting on it through three more, unrelated researches. To make my choice even more stupid, I was losing food for health reasons (Clams are +1 health) for having a lot of flood plains around my capitol.
Stolen Rutters
Deity
I tend to have trouble playing in the moment and forgetting going after what helps my position most. "Hey, that tech looks quite inviting. I don't really need it this moment and I could trade for it later, but it won't take but a minute... Hey, how'd they beat me to Alphabet!"
Yep, I'm familiar with that very well.
Yep, I'm familiar with that very well.
I'm hypothesizing, after my Gandhi experience, two tracks that might have potential playing Deity-Huge-Raging (neither of which I followed very well): a "Coastal" track; and a "Religious" track.
In the Coastal track, you would research Fishing and rely on the sea for your commerce, obviating the need for Worker builds and defending them from Barbarians, and thus having to defend only your city centers against the Barbarian onslaught, which you might do (here is where it gets really hypothetical) with promoted Warriors alone, and not research Archery early on at all.
Given the 25% defense against Barbarians for city squares that I just discovered (I think older versions of Civ had the same thing, so it's not a surprise, but it does seem to be undocumented in Civ IV), a Warrior with Combat I and Shield promotions defending a 20% cultural defense city against a Barbarian Archer would have a 4.1 combat strength compared with the Archer's 3.0, which should be workable. And you'd be 3.6 v. 2.0 with a Barbarian Warrior. You'd want to have something better by the time the Axemen start coming -- a Warrior with Combat I and Shock and a city with 40% cultural defense bonus or wall would still just be 4.5 or 4.7 v. 7.5 for a Barbarian Axeman, which just doesn't cut it -- but hopefully you'd have something better by then, maybe Archers.
The Religious track is much less developed in my thinking, but basically you'd need to found a religion and then rush to get your Great Prophet and Shrine and to spread the religion and start getting commerce that way.
In the Coastal track, you would research Fishing and rely on the sea for your commerce, obviating the need for Worker builds and defending them from Barbarians, and thus having to defend only your city centers against the Barbarian onslaught, which you might do (here is where it gets really hypothetical) with promoted Warriors alone, and not research Archery early on at all.
Given the 25% defense against Barbarians for city squares that I just discovered (I think older versions of Civ had the same thing, so it's not a surprise, but it does seem to be undocumented in Civ IV), a Warrior with Combat I and Shield promotions defending a 20% cultural defense city against a Barbarian Archer would have a 4.1 combat strength compared with the Archer's 3.0, which should be workable. And you'd be 3.6 v. 2.0 with a Barbarian Warrior. You'd want to have something better by the time the Axemen start coming -- a Warrior with Combat I and Shock and a city with 40% cultural defense bonus or wall would still just be 4.5 or 4.7 v. 7.5 for a Barbarian Axeman, which just doesn't cut it -- but hopefully you'd have something better by then, maybe Archers.
The Religious track is much less developed in my thinking, but basically you'd need to found a religion and then rush to get your Great Prophet and Shrine and to spread the religion and start getting commerce that way.
I think founding religions is not worth it. By "rush to get your Great Prophet", you mean building a temple, then turning a citizen into a Priest, then waiting 34 turns (on Normal speed, much longer on Marathon) for a Great Prophet to pop? And either waiting for religion to spread on its own or sending Missionaries through the barbarian-infested wilderness to spread it, for a return of one gold per city? Way too slow and unprofitable.
My general philosophy is to bring resources online as soon as possible. That means building a Worker or Workboat first and researching the appropriate techs (Ag, Husbandry, etc). Your initial sequence should emphasize expanding productivity (measured as the sum of hammers and excess food, since they're largely convertible). Worker, Warrior (growing to size 2), Settler is a very common sequence for me. At the very beginning, don't worry too much about commerce -- the 8 you get from your Palace make other contributions proportionately smaller -- although if you've got Gold/Silver/Gems or Fish/Clams/Crabs you certainly want to get on those.
Sometimes you'll want to grab Pottery before Alphabet, depending mostly on how many resources your capital will be working (fewer resources means your capital has to be doing something else) and whether the pre-reqs (Wheel plus either Fishing or Ag) are already available.
The other question is Bronze Working. I used to avoid it, preferring to pick it up in trade. But it offers both chopping and whipping to accelerate your production, and as I said, expanding productivity is key. I think if you have lots of excess food and/or lots of forests, it's worth it. But you probably don't have time for both Pottery and BW before Alphabet.
Defending vs Barbarians, I think, is better done away from your cities. Get three or four units out to bust fog, and you'll see a lot less of them. A coastal start is a big help in this respect. I can sometimes even leave a city unoccupied, keeping its "defender" in the field to keep them from spawning in the first place. You certainly need one of four things: Quechua, Archery, Husbandry+Wheel+Horse, or Bronze+Copper. I try to avoid Archery, as it's a dead-end. So if Husbandry or Bronze reveals an appropriate resource, I'm strongly biased to pick it up with my second city, then get Wheel (excepting fortunate river arrangements) to connect it.
Hope this helps, and good luck.
peace,
lilnev
My general philosophy is to bring resources online as soon as possible. That means building a Worker or Workboat first and researching the appropriate techs (Ag, Husbandry, etc). Your initial sequence should emphasize expanding productivity (measured as the sum of hammers and excess food, since they're largely convertible). Worker, Warrior (growing to size 2), Settler is a very common sequence for me. At the very beginning, don't worry too much about commerce -- the 8 you get from your Palace make other contributions proportionately smaller -- although if you've got Gold/Silver/Gems or Fish/Clams/Crabs you certainly want to get on those.
Sometimes you'll want to grab Pottery before Alphabet, depending mostly on how many resources your capital will be working (fewer resources means your capital has to be doing something else) and whether the pre-reqs (Wheel plus either Fishing or Ag) are already available.
The other question is Bronze Working. I used to avoid it, preferring to pick it up in trade. But it offers both chopping and whipping to accelerate your production, and as I said, expanding productivity is key. I think if you have lots of excess food and/or lots of forests, it's worth it. But you probably don't have time for both Pottery and BW before Alphabet.
Defending vs Barbarians, I think, is better done away from your cities. Get three or four units out to bust fog, and you'll see a lot less of them. A coastal start is a big help in this respect. I can sometimes even leave a city unoccupied, keeping its "defender" in the field to keep them from spawning in the first place. You certainly need one of four things: Quechua, Archery, Husbandry+Wheel+Horse, or Bronze+Copper. I try to avoid Archery, as it's a dead-end. So if Husbandry or Bronze reveals an appropriate resource, I'm strongly biased to pick it up with my second city, then get Wheel (excepting fortunate river arrangements) to connect it.
Hope this helps, and good luck.
peace,
lilnev
Good comments, lilnev. Your argument against relying on religion for early commerce makes sense; in fact it takes 100 turns at Deity-Huge-Marathon to get a Great Prophet from a Priest. This might be a nice supplement later in the game, but almost certainly a miss-use of population early on.
Your quartet of defensive needs options looks right. The problem with avoiding Archery (I, probably very much like you, saw its dead end on the tech tree and thought, "Well, I'm never going to research that!") is that, of the four, it is the only one that does rely on either your starting civilization or an uncertain availability of a resource. My last game had a single horse resource on all the territory I'd explored (about a fat cross and a half from my capitol) and absolutely no copper whatever. Granted, I hadn't explored a whole lot, but probably about a three fat cross radius semicircle around my capitol.
Your quartet of defensive needs options looks right. The problem with avoiding Archery (I, probably very much like you, saw its dead end on the tech tree and thought, "Well, I'm never going to research that!") is that, of the four, it is the only one that does rely on either your starting civilization or an uncertain availability of a resource. My last game had a single horse resource on all the territory I'd explored (about a fat cross and a half from my capitol) and absolutely no copper whatever. Granted, I hadn't explored a whole lot, but probably about a three fat cross radius semicircle around my capitol.
