Deity Q&A

[cazaderonus]

Gonna take the example of the game i played this week end. Deity, Alexander.

Started in a very hilly area, so production wasnt gonna be a problem and there was value to get a builder quite soon. I also decided to rush apprenticeship afap for the boost to mines.
First builds were common, slinger x 2 and then a warrior. Enough just to scout the closest areas, get rid of barb camps and eventually stopped a very early DOW considering the terrain. Then builder and settler, and finally an encampment plus the unique building before starting on a campus.

Second city was very close to my capital, and started builder and then commercial hub to support my economy. Capital just popped out 4/5 of each UU of greece.

Reaching apprenticeship was actually quite fast after unlocking the UUs and i got the boost to mines half way in my army building process. Add the production boost to building units from the classical era (first melee then mounted) and i was getting a UU every 3 turn. With the early encampment, i got the Sun Tzu.

Basically, at turn 85 or something i was good to go. Culture and Science were very low but it was planned to just get it through conquest. Suffice to say that Sun Tzu plus 15 units and a battering ram simply destroyed brazil, and then persia. I picked Brazil because i had no choice, and then persia because he had built 3/4 campuses already when brazil was basically nothing but theatre districts.

At turn 120/130, i had 15 cities. OP ALEXANDER

 

[Victoria]

Last game I started on a 1 wide land bottleneck as England and though great, a sea game... then the barbs came in.... my half built builder was discarded and managed to hang on with 4 slingers then a horseman appeared so it was above, archers x 8 then Russia came across the sands at me, took Russia and then with some fine Iron and battering ram took France and Jerusalem. Ended up at T110 with 10 cities, Russian and France both neutral on one city and not one damn ship built. Sometimes the game just makes you be bad.

 

[Chibisuke]

In virtually every game i have recently played, the barbarians were the main problem. I can always kill them, but too often they slow me down just enough to make sure one of the AI can start snowballing faster. I could probably still win most deity games, but they take much longer to win now. I guess this is how they decided to make the game harder (even more so than just giving the AI archers) but I feel like it is kind of cheap.

 

[CorneliusBrutus]

Question for everybody about early sieges: I've seen people in this thread and others mentioning that it's a good idea to try and bully neighboring civs and city states and you can snag a city or two from them using just a 2-3 warriors and 3-4 archers. I've been trying this approach lately but have been having trouble closing the deal on any of the cities, seems like the base health (even without walls) is just too damn high for my guys to handle. Is there a specific set of battle tactics I've been executing incorrectly? I've been sniping the city continuously with archers while trying to surround with warriors, but it takes so long to whittle down and the attrition from new enemy troops/barbarians wandering in seems to render all this counter-productive.

 

[Victoria]

It is not something I have done more than a couple of times but guess it's what they mean.
It's an opportunistic thing, you are spamming slingers from the start, a CS is very close... or a civ. that seems like it's just not getting an strength in its walls fast... this will be a civ with a secondary agenda like technophile so it is unlikely to be building many troops. It's strength is so low that it takes little effort to take the city

 

[MIS]

Question for everybody about early sieges: I've seen people in this thread and others mentioning that it's a good idea to try and bully neighboring civs and city states and you can snag a city or two from them using just a 2-3 warriors and 3-4 archers. I've been trying this approach lately but have been having trouble closing the deal on any of the cities, seems like the base health (even without walls) is just too damn high for my guys to handle. Is there a specific set of battle tactics I've been executing incorrectly? I've been sniping the city continuously with archers while trying to surround with warriors, but it takes so long to whittle down and the attrition from new enemy troops/barbarians wandering in seems to render all this counter-productive.

You can slam the warriors into the city at some stage, and it won't kill the warriors. Heal them after you take the city.

 

[Victoria]

You can slam the warriors into the city at some stage, and it won't kill the warriors. Heal them after you take the city.

At some stage slamming the warriors into the city do not do enough damage, even without walls. A 15 strength city is a lot easier to take than a 30 strength one.

 

[cazaderonus]

Even if you can't take a city, bullying your first neighboor is still a good deal. Just make sure not to lose unit and to kill his, and you'll get a sweet peace deal that will probably be an amazing booster for your early game. Considering there arent any warmongering penalty at that stage, there's no reason not to do it.

 

[CorneliusBrutus]

Even if you can't take a city, bullying your first neighboor is still a good deal. Just make sure not to lose unit and to kill his, and you'll get a sweet peace deal that will probably be an amazing booster for your early game. Considering there arent any warmongering penalty at that stage, there's no reason not to do it.

This is a good tip, cazaderonus, thanks. I declared war on Kongo to steal a passing settler, and they started trickling in troops so I could pick them off. Despite not really being an imminent threat to take any of his cities, I killed enough of his troops so when asked for peace he offered 13 gold a turn.

 

[PYITE]

When deciding which neighbor to attack it is always wise to check in the victory leaders drop down to see who is currently the softest target. Choose the one with the lowest military strength and/or are spending most of their early production on religion (look at the great prophet points). Also be aware of civ traits that make them have strong defensive bonuses like Teddy's +5 on home continent or whoever gets defender of the faith for their religion.

 

[TurboJ]

Question for everybody about early sieges: I've seen people in this thread and others mentioning that it's a good idea to try and bully neighboring civs and city states and you can snag a city or two from them using just a 2-3 warriors and 3-4 archers. I've been trying this approach lately but have been having trouble closing the deal on any of the cities, seems like the base health (even without walls) is just too damn high for my guys to handle. Is there a specific set of battle tactics I've been executing incorrectly? I've been sniping the city continuously with archers while trying to surround with warriors, but it takes so long to whittle down and the attrition from new enemy troops/barbarians wandering in seems to render all this counter-productive.

If the terrain is flat you can easily just switch units back and forth so you can let them heal while some other unit takes the beating. It also matters if the enemy city is on a hill (more defence strength) and if there is a military unit inside the city (same thing).
If there are no walls and you're not multiple eras behind in tech, 3 melee and 3-4 ranged units will always be enough. Try to make the enemy focus your melee troops so your ranged guys can keep shooting. Put your melee units in hill/forest tiles and fortify - that way they can take a lot more punishment.

If enemy city has walls there are more things to consider. You need to focus on taking those walls down because usually the wall bombardment is your strongest defending enemy unit (most damage caused with a single hit). Do a calculative attack on the walls with a melee troop every once in a while. This will make enemy shoot the hurt melee unit more likely than a full health ranged unit. Then just make sure that melee unit can retreat to heal and put another melee unit in his place. Against walled cities you may need 5 ranged units so that 4 can always keep shooting while one is healing. It depends what your tech level is - crossbows can handle a lot with just three of them shooting. A catapult can be really useful - but bear in mind the enemy WILL be focusing on the catapult. Try to use some melee troops as distraction again so that your catapult can actually shoot once before pulling back to heal.

BUT. There is one strategy that is by far the easiest and fastest in early war against cities with walls. Use battering rams. Whenever a battering ram is adjacent to an enemy city, any melee-style unit will do critical damage to the walls. Three warriors can break a 30-defence city's walls in one turn. Always put the battering ram in the same tile as a strong melee unit so the ram won't get wiped. The really OP part is the ram works with all non-ranged units. It works with melee, works with cavalry and even works with melee naval units. And you can even put the ram in a water tile as long as it's adjacent to the city and protected by a ship in the same tile. With battering rams taking down cities is EASY. If you use rams you need ranged units only to deal with enemy military and the city's base health after the walls are down. Sure you can use archers to add to the melee troops' wall damage but you will rarely really need it. One tip: when using the ram, don't believe what the pre-battle indicator tells you. Attack and see how the actual damage done is infinitely more than predicted.

And always, once walls are down, try to keep the city surrounded so it doesn't heal (three units is usually enough to "hold siege".

 

[CorneliusBrutus]

Thanks TurboJ. I was able to take a couple cities with a battering ram, which obviously makes a big difference. Think I missed the early window where the cities were still < 20 strength.