Deity Rerolls and Losses

Mondoflow

Chieftain
Joined
Dec 25, 2012
Messages
9
So I just started playing again after a decent break and after playing a few games on Emperor I decided to bump it up to Deity again. I remember that I've won a few games at this difficulty but I don't really remember any of the details. Recently I've just been getting dominated over and over again. Sometimes it's because of mistakes that I've made and can correct, other times I feel it's because the civilization I chose to play as isn't actually all that helpful, and other times I just kind of feel like the map has dumped me into an unplayable (or at least very difficult) position.

I was curious what some more experienced players might think about this sort of thing. When you play Deity, do you win frequently, or do you chalk up a fair amount of losses in the process? Does map layout and civilization have a significant impact on victory, or could you throw everything on random and walk away victorious every time anyway? Are some civilizations significantly weaker than others? Do you have a simple rigid plan that you follow every time that leads to victory, or are you more flexible, changing your strategy to fit the map you're given and the status of your opposing civs? What are some of the ways you overcome the AI's ridiculous bonuses?

It's just getting a bit tiring, sometimes, when I start within 10 tiles of Greece and they assault me on turn 30 with a seemingly endless wave of warriors as I attempt to defend myself with a pair of archers. Or when I get my first settler around turns 30 or 40, but France has already completely cut me off from the rest of the world with their 6+ cities. Figured it'd be easier to improve if I asked other people what they were doing rather than continuously bashing my head against the game until I win.

Edit: Another thing I've noticed is that it seems almost impossible to get wonders. On lower difficulties I'd often gun straight for The Great Library (or Lighthouse, on occasion). In my recent games, though, I think I've successfully done it once, and I forgot how I did it that time (I probably just got lucky). I distinctly remember starting as Egypt, dropping a monument and scout before discovering writing (I went straight there. Pottery > Writing), finding faith from some combination of city states and ruins, and immediately beginning construction on The Great Library with a 50% bonus to its construction. I'm pretty sure I also bought a worker in the meantime to attempt to improve some tiles, but I was still beaten to the thing. Is it worth it to even attempt wonders if I can put so much effort and focus into getting one and still lose out?
 
Why are you playing diety?

Judging by your questions, it doesn't sound like you're ready for that difficulty level.

At least try some Immortal games first. There is a distinct jump in difficulty from emperor to immortal to diety.
 
Deity has become really ridiculous after the patch, there's 3 reasons to play it:

-You like insane challenge
-Immortal is too easy for you
-You really really hate yourself for some reason, see a psych :crazyeye:
 
I am in a similar position as you are. Winning immortal almost every time and losing deity almost every time. (since the patch) So i keep bashing too :). It sounds, though, that you put too little emphasis on early army. Like, having 6-7 early archers (CB) is a must have on deity.

I also noticed that pyramids usually go pretty late, if you're into wonders. Other wonders are definitely pointless to chase on most occasions.

You have to follow a very narrow scientific path to succeed there. For example, if i start with 4 cities, NC should be there no later than turn 80. Education - turns 100 -115. And you better rush a university or two with cash asap.

I took refuge in deity archipelago maps lately, where i win most of the time and with any civ. You can pretty much play a peaceful or warmogering game as you like, since civs are much less psychotic when there are no immediate borders.

Imo, Deity difficulty goes up from low on archipelago, to medium on continents/fractal and to insane on Pangaea. So, maybe you should tone that difficulty down a bit? :)
 
I am in a similar position as you are. Winning immortal almost every time and losing deity almost every time. (since the patch)

Me too. I think if I want to try again, I will have to have some super favorable settings but that still wouldn't really count as a legitimate deity victory imo. I think I'll go back to Immortal, which I know I can almost always win, and play some civs I have never tried, perhaps go with some off victories (e.g., Mongols cultural).
 
Why are you playing diety?

Judging by your questions, it doesn't sound like you're ready for that difficulty level.

At least try some Immortal games first. There is a distinct jump in difficulty from emperor to immortal to diety.

Well, I'm playing Deity now because I have won at that level a couple times before, it just wasn't recent. So I wanted to play Civ V again and I jumped in at Emperor this time and there wasn't really much challenge at Emperor, so I bumped it back up to Deity. I might go back and try a couple games at Immortal, though, and see how that goes.

Deity has become really ridiculous after the patch, there's 3 reasons to play it:

-You like insane challenge
-Immortal is too easy for you
-You really really hate yourself for some reason, see a psych :crazyeye:

All three of these are very possible. The rest of my life hasn't really been going great recently, so I suppose I'm trying to prove that I can succeed at something. Looks like I'm failing here, too, though. :lol:

I am in a similar position as you are. Winning immortal almost every time and losing deity almost every time. (since the patch) So i keep bashing too :). It sounds, though, that you put too little emphasis on early army. Like, having 6-7 early archers (CB) is a must have on deity.

I also noticed that pyramids usually go pretty late, if you're into wonders. Other wonders are definitely pointless to chase on most occasions.

You have to follow a very narrow scientific path to succeed there. For example, if i start with 4 cities, NC should be there no later than turn 80. Education - turns 100 -115. And you better rush a university or two with cash asap.

I took refuge in deity archipelago maps lately, where i win most of the time and with any civ. You can pretty much play a peaceful or warmogering game as you like, since civs are much less psychotic when there are no immediate borders.

Imo, Deity difficulty goes up from low on archipelago, to medium on continents/fractal and to insane on Pangaea. So, maybe you should tone that difficulty down a bit? :)

I'm trying to balance the early army thing out at the moment. I'm finding that I fall behind on science and get outgunned pretty quickly. I also maybe need to work on city placement a bit, I'm not sure. Placing things in easily defendable positions hasn't always been a top priority.

Also, my Deity wins were on archipelagos, I'm pretty sure, but looking at exactly the bonuses the AI gets that seems to kind of screw them a little bit, so I was going to try for continents instead. Then I discovered the joy of luxury trading, though, so I bumped the civ count up to 8 and went with pangaea maps so I could try to cash in on that. I've just been trying all sorts of things.
 
The current GOTM 51 game is just too hard at deity! The AI can launch a spaceship around the turn 240 and you need at least 6 cities to launch before that turn. The problem is that every neighbors will attack you someday and reduce all your cities into dust...

I tried an OCC attempt but without any success. When i try to build Apollo Darius already built some components and Hubble!

I agree with Moriarte. Only tommynt can beat deity pangea maps...well there is no proofs yet but we will see in next days :D
 
Cash lump sum abuse is a must in deity Pangaea. Dow everyone early and raise an army of CBs quickly to force peace treaties.
 
Well, I'm playing Deity now because I have won at that level a couple times before, it just wasn't recent. So I wanted to play Civ V again and I jumped in at Emperor this time and there wasn't really much challenge at Emperor, so I bumped it back up to Deity. I might go back and try a couple games at Immortal, though, and see how that goes.
There is a significant difference between deity pre-patch and post patch. Not to mention vanilla. Some people feel that immortal has become a lot tougher as well. So, IMO, it's a good place to start.

I'm trying to balance the early army thing out at the moment. I'm finding that I fall behind on science and get outgunned pretty quickly. I also maybe need to work on city placement a bit, I'm not sure. Placing things in easily defendable positions hasn't always been a top priority.
Science-wise you start way behind and stay behind. At least until you manage to catch up. The trick is not to die before it happens and not to let the wars slow you down to the point it can't happen.
As for city placement... Hills. Period. :D


I'll keep bashing for now too. So far three of my attempts at 'proper' pangaea win ended the same inglorious way. I successfully rush one neighbor, pause to build up, upgrade, take care of happiness etc, attack the second one and before I can make any progress get double back door attack from my so-called friends. :)

Archipelago maps are still easy. Turtling up and sneaking in science/diplo win with very tall empire is still possible given the right circumstances. Sadato's thread, for example. And we can always handpick opponents. But all of these are not really 'proper'. Not in my book anyway. So bashing it is... :lol: Adjusment takes time and effort and I think it's a good thing. But we'll get there. Eventually.

I'm curious to try GotM 51 map. Don't expect anything good to come out of it, but I'll try to scramble something, just for kicks. I think the organizers wanted to make it easier by reducing number of AI and giving the players more space. However, they also gave the AI more space and on deity this is not a good idea. Making the map more crowded rather than less crowded might have been better.
 
... What are some of the ways you overcome the AI's ridiculous bonuses?

I've experienced most of what you are saying post patch. But one thing that has not changed is success with the mongols (no need for any deal breaking either if that's your predilection). Give them a try or two on deity pangea. It is harder than before because of AI bonuses and lack of restrictions and because getting to keshiks takes longer. But once you get rolling the AI cannot stop keshiks until they get air power. Make sure you scout enough of the map to identify the inevitable (liberty [balance issues here]) run away AI so that you can target them in the first or second campaign.

I'll be giving the Huns a try at some point. However they are not as effective for as long as the mongols IMO. So you have to at some point equip youself with less effective types of units which against an infinite number of zombies I'm not getting very far (e.g. swords rushes don't do it for me).

... Another thing I've noticed is that it seems almost impossible to get wonders. ...

Agreed for the most part. Especially the great library which goes on average around turn 30 with a tight standard deviation. However I've been working on tall cultural games. Given a decent capital you can get a fair number of religious/cultrual wonders up to cristo. But the AI has launched no later than T 240 and I need to improve to beat that.
 
After jumping up and down ranting to those that want to play a dumb-downed version of Civ and those being critical of how hard some elements were, I am so pleased that the progression from vanilla to G&K to post-patch made the higher levels more difficult and more challenging. Now if Firaxis can bring back the happiness limitations, maybe we can even say that Immortal would be like Deity is now.
 
After jumping up and down ranting to those that want to play a dumb-downed version of Civ and those being critical of how hard some elements were, I am so pleased that the progression from vanilla to G&K to post-patch made the higher levels more difficult and more challenging. Now if Firaxis can bring back the happiness limitations, maybe we can even say that Immortal would be like Deity is now.

What? You want less happiness, why and how?
The AI already gets to play with basically unlimited unhappiness, and humans have enough issues with happiness as it is, especially if you don't get get to found a religion that gives you more happiness.
 
What? You want less happiness, why and how?
The AI already gets to play with basically unlimited unhappiness, and humans have enough issues with happiness as it is, especially if you don't get get to found a religion that gives you more happiness.

I don't think so. In vanilla, we were struggling to keep happiness in the -3 to 4 range; now we keep it in the 3 to 9 range (more with beliefs), early-mid, in a sense taking happiness out of the decision-making equation. The AI had unlimited in vanilla as they do now but will still gladly buy any luxuries you have. This makes mid-game warfare easier since we can move through faster absorbing the temporary happiness hits. Religion can certainly raise the happiness to unprecedented levels but even without that, the increased variety of luxuries and the addition of Mercantile city-states all raised happiness by default by us doing the usual things.
 
This thread has made me feel a lot better. After 20+ post-patch attempts to win on deity pangaea in the 'true' fashion that The Pilgrim described, I was beginning to wonder what was wrong with my playstyle. Now I realize: it's not just me. Post-patch, deity really is hard to win.

-You like insane challenge
-Immortal is too easy for you
-You really really hate yourself for some reason, see a psych :crazyeye:

As Meatloaf sang it, "Two out of three ain't bad"
 
I don't think so. In vanilla, we were struggling to keep happiness in the -3 to 4 range; now we keep it in the 3 to 9 range (more with beliefs), early-mid, in a sense taking happiness out of the decision-making equation. The AI had unlimited in vanilla as they do now but will still gladly buy any luxuries you have. This makes mid-game warfare easier since we can move through faster absorbing the temporary happiness hits. Religion can certainly raise the happiness to unprecedented levels but even without that, the increased variety of luxuries and the addition of Mercantile city-states all raised happiness by default by us doing the usual things.
Amount of unique luxuries per map remained the same, afaik. However due to mercantile CS and religion happiness is hardly limiting indeed.
And I'm also very pleased to see how different Civ5 is compared to what it used to be. Does any of you want to try something like this? :D (Smallfish, thanks again for the reminder. You made my day. :cool:)
 
G&K boosted the number of luxuries on the map, not the Fall patch.

Agree on mercantile (Fall patch reduced that benefit a bit--reduced the friend-to-ally boost and suspended the CS-special luxuries when CS is conquered) and religion (again, Fall patch shift of religious building happiness (pagodas, etc.) from global to local was a good move).
 
G&K boosted the number of luxuries on the map, not the Fall patch.

Agree on mercantile (Fall patch reduced that benefit a bit--reduced the friend-to-ally boost and suspended the CS-special luxuries when CS is conquered) and religion (again, Fall patch shift of religious building happiness (pagodas, etc.) from global to local was a good move).

Right. And I think one more notch downwards would do it. You know something is wrong when you are sitting at +20-32 happiness in mid-game.
 
You know something is wrong when you are sitting at +20-32 happiness in mid-game.

Your cities are probably not big enough. :D Or, it's time to capture few.

Btw., if you compare Vanilla and GK, it is worth noting that game became harder due to RA nerf. So, this happiness boost is merely balancing science.
 
Cash lump sum abuse is a must in deity Pangaea. Dow everyone early and raise an army of CBs quickly to force peace treaties.

Get cash and DoW is a thing. But trying to make peace after is another thing. On that pangea map(GOTM 51) you start with Babylon and quickly after 70-80 turns you retreive yourself squeezed on a open area, in the middle of the map with 3 neighbors.

What you don't want is multiple DoWs. Declaring war for gold can be a lot good(the AI can sit on near 5K of gold after 120 turns) but other civs may get pissed too fast. It's hard to balance everything.
 
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