Deity problems

[Arimae70]

Let me start off by saying these forums and the contributors are invaluable. I recently started playing Deity after a few wins on Emperor and am getting clobbered!
I always get out-expanded, and when I place cities near neighbors to limit their expansion I lose them to culture flips. If I concentrate on culture then I fall way behind military and get invaded, even by polite enemys. After looking at the games and reading the forums, the one thing I seem to be not doing is sending out scouts ASAP and getting contact with all the civs. How do you prevent the flips and could my lack of scouts be critical?

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Contacts rule; try a SEA Civ, Curraghs are the best scouts.
Not much you can do about culture flips, though; early wars are useful, the AI will switch to military mode and stops building culture.
In general, either restart until you get a Settler Factory (by all means, play an AGR Civ; Iros and Dutch are usually considered the best Civs for moving up), or practice a bit on DG before moving to Deity. The AI gets a bonus Settler here as well, but otherwise, it's more like Emperor than Deity.

 

[Renata]

If you're cautious with city placement, you'll suffer fewer flips. A natively-built city with no foreign citizens that has all its 21 working tiles held by the native culture will never flip. So at least if you have enough expansion power to get a decent number of cities built without encroaching on the AI, it might be worth it to stay X....X away if you have a choice. An off-axis X...X is usually ok, too, if you're only ceding one or two tiles to the AI culture -- you can usually station a few extra units there to avoid the flip.

You're never going to win a culture war with a deity AI, so you may as well admit that up front and not tempt fate. That's my philosophy, anyway, and it works pretty well unless I get impossibly boxed in; others will no doubt do things differently.

Renata

 

[punkbass2000]

Nah, you can beat the AI in culture at Deity, I find.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Sure you can win Deity by culture (and in such a game, culture flip to you aren't rare); but you cannot win a culture war for a city, or more territory, if you do not focus the entire game on it.

 

[Renata]

Yes, that's what I meant. And I doubt that I personally am skilled enough to win by culture at Deity level, except by levelling everybody else and waiting for the end, that is.

Renata

 

[punkbass2000]

Sure you can win Deity by culture (and in such a game, culture flip to you aren't rare); but you cannot win a culture war for a city, or more territory, if you do not focus the entire game on it.

Fair enough. In my current documented game in the AU, I would say I'm focused on it pretty heavily. It is the most difficult part. I do wonder what exactly you mean by "focusing the entire game on it", though. I still have many a Barracks and Granary. It's not even 1000BC and I'm already joining all my workers back to cities. I am pop-rushing Temples in (mostly) border cities and am otherwise performing a "culture-bomb" (mostly through palace-relocation). Would this sound like what you're describing?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I never waste time on culture. Just capture the cities that are threathening yours. Flips are not really so much of a worry, recapturing them is easy as they are defended by only 1 unit.

1 scout is normally enough to gain the needed contacts, just make it go for a long distance rather than moving around your capital to scout nearby ground.
Curraghs are the best scout however, they can usually meet everyone and are not really obstructed by enemy terrain (land units get kicked out, a curragh is normally just asked to leave once and you can sail on as you intended to)

You simply must get better at managing and microing your empire so that you outproduce your opponents on militairy.

 

[Drakan]

Arimae70, follow Doc's advice and play with the Iroquois or the Dutch (preferably the latter for their UU for defence purposes). Also, try starting off playing a large or huge archipiélago map with 80% water against six other civs. When you win that one, move up to an archipielago with 70% water and 7 civs and so on. If you've only won a couple of times at Emperor perhaps it's still to soon for you to move on to Deity. In any case, it takes a whole lot of time and practise to beat deity almost consistently. And the difference from playing Emperor to Deity is almost as big as from moving on up from Monarch to Emperor. You just have to hang on and get used to it.

 

[Whomp]

Arimae I am with you. I've tried the leap from emperor to deity and get pounded. I think it will just take more practice on different maps and then moving up to DG.
It might be helpful to get in a succession game with one these guys someday too.

 

[Arimae70]

Thanks for all the responses! I had been winning about 80% of my Emperor games, mostly using the ToE --> Hoovers and leading to space race or UN victory. The occasional war was modern where I had supperiority & massive production.

After playing through GOTM 37 I see there's so much to learn! Especially my war-mongering (or is it war-wimper?) & trade skills. I never start early wars and it seems that is common at this level. My cities were placed close to enemy lines to prevent expansion but you suggest not so close, I'll try that.

Also, I play the French a lot and from the forums I gather they are not the easiest for beginners is that right? I am going to try the suggested civs.

 

[Tomoyo]

My first Deity game was played with the French... I think that the French are a good choice, because of Commercial, which is very important, as Deity corruption is very bad...

 

[punkbass2000]

French are definitely a top choice if it's Vanilla Civ. If it's C3C, I'd go Dutch or Iroquois.

 

[JMK]

You did not give a lot information from your game, but as far as I can read, you should be a builder rather than warmonger player, which is not bad when you play Deity.

You may need to build a bit more military units that what you are currently doing.
If you can not expend because, your opponents are too close to you, go 100% to the military approach, with only 5 cities and a good anciant age UU you can easily take a couple cities from your opponent, sue for peace after 4/5 turns; and do it again 20 turns later.

When you have enough cities to at least build your forbidden Palace, you are all set, go back to the builder game, keep some updated military ready.
If you want a military victory, research the bottom line of the Middle Age Tech Tree, otherwise research the upper part of the tree, go to Education, build your Unis and sell your tech for other tech and GPT. You will be the Tech leader by the end of the Middle Ages, begining of the Industrial Ages.

 

[SunZsu]

disable culture victory, and do not allow cities to "fliP" .... the Great Khan does NOT permit this lunacy - conquered peoples should know better, anyway

nothing is more frustrating to me in this game (other than maybe watching a galley sink a battleship, or a spearman kill a Modern Armor unit) than a culture flip of a city, especially when you have quite a few military units in the city when that happens and you end up losing them .... the AI cheats enough, so I can, too ....

 

[Arimae70]

Yep currently playing vanilla. At the end of AA I usually have enough cities to build the FP - but always less than everyone else, and maybe 1-2 techs behind. It's during the MA that I falter and often fall a whole age behind by IA. Good to know war isn't the only option on Deity.

 

[mills]

i was defending an area full of mountains (difficulty of deity). i used 21 cannons to defend opponents (russia) incoming but only 4 of them were effective - others failed. can anyone tell me is it because of the terrain, or the opponent unit, or because of the difficulty. eventhough russia's only artillery were enough to breakdown the wall of city which i was defending (made me mad). but i stroke with the same 21 cannons to plain field but it wasn't much different. it was also the same about catapult or trebuchet. shouldn't i use artillery units or is there anything else?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

i was defending an area full of mountains (difficulty of deity). i used 21 cannons to defend opponents (russia) incoming but only 4 of them were effective - others failed. can anyone tell me is it because of the terrain, or the opponent unit, or because of the difficulty. eventhough russia's only artillery were enough to breakdown the wall of city which i was defending (made me mad). but i stroke with the same 21 cannons to plain field but it wasn't much different. it was also the same about catapult or trebuchet. shouldn't i use artillery units or is there anything else?

double posted.

 

[Tomoyo]

You double posted? Where's the second post?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

he double posted, his question is also in another thread.