Deity Spaceship in under 200 turns - a brief guide

[alpaca]

This strategy seems built largely upon luck.

Well you need some luck to start off with, but then again nobody said you can reliably launch a spaceship before turn 200 on deity. All Civ4 deity games were based on luck because you needed a very good starting position. Good strategy means minimizing the required luck, and as strategies go I think this one is pretty good, though you may have to restart a couple of times to get the early game right.

 

[KingMorgan]

It's a good strat for an early win, but like everything it's a little bit map and opponent dependant for the actual win date. Lack of a Maritime CS would be a bit of a bugger too.

 

[playshogi]

I was able to complete the warrior rush on this map. I think it's a strong start because of a riverside capital (settle on the wheat), gold (mint) and marble. So, if you're having trouble, try this map.

 

[pagh80]

Impressive.
Nice job!

Its also nice to see that you did it without a pure ICS approach.
The only thing to note is if this can be done with another civ. Sofar the babylon bonusses(100% GS production and 1 free GS sounds extremelly powerful)

 

[Martin Alvito]

All "fastest possible win" approaches are dependent upon the map. Sometimes you have to audible away from the gameplan.

For instance, I had the best start I've ever seen in the France game I mentioned. I was able to move to Cows on the first turn, and the capital had another Cow and 2x Gems. I ended up settling something like 6x Gems, 2x Sugar, 2x Silver, Fur. Gandhi coughed up both Workers around turn 10, and the absurd start let me launch the Warrior rush just after turn 20, buy a Settler in the late 20's, found the third city on turn 34 or so and still Maritime in the early 40's.

Unfortunately, I also discovered that I had Alex off to the north. Sure enough, scouting quickly revealed that he was massing a gigantic army of Hoplites, and there was only one logical target. The only possible response was to ditch quick Unis for early Steel.

I could have forced a lengthy stalemate with Iron easily enough, but there was no way that I was slashing through his forest of spears with Swords. A stalemate would have yielded a loss. There was plenty of space for both of us to settle up north and a bunch of indefensible Iron I couldn't settle. If I went for fast Unis, he would have deployed Longswords well before I could and thrashed me with them. So I had to go warmonger and strike first.

I'm not claiming that you can go fast Unis every game. Your geostrategic position will preclude it in many games. But if you can, you can launch before 200.

 

[alpaca]

Its also nice to see that you did it without a pure ICS approach.

Agreed. This coincides with my own observation that you want to stop ICS at some point (when you can't get Colosseums and Libraries online in the new city with still having some 10-20 turns left before your desired end date to profit). For these very fast pre-turn-200 games I think you want to typically stop at 15-20 cities.

Aiming for such comparatively few cities, it becomes more interesting again to leave a few gaps in your lattice to favour better positions. This is purely a boundary-effect caused by the game being scheduled to end around a certain turn: "pure" ICS would go out of the game with significantly better figures (especially science) but a bit later.

 

[Martin Alvito]

For these very fast pre-turn-200 games I think you want to typically stop at 15-20 cities.

There isn't much point in founding a city that won't produce a Great Scientist before the game ends. You research only a handful of techs after turn 130, and that's about when you're looking at bringing a late city fully online with a Uni.

This is purely a boundary-effect caused by the game being scheduled to end around a certain turn: "pure" ICS would go out of the game with significantly better figures (especially science) but a bit later.

Exactly. ICS is the long-run maximizer, but the compressed tech tree coupled with the power of Great Scientists favors short-run thinking.

 

[dkrussian]

Ok, does anyone have some more tips for the warrior rush part, because 9/10 times it's just not happening. It's not even tactics so much as terrain.

There's three basic problems that I'm hoping someone can enlighten me on.

1. When stealing a worker the AI puts up a warrior wall. Is the solution to move back, declare, and try and get them to attack you? Doesn't seem to work all much. If I move around I can usually get the worker after running around a lot, but this is happening on turn 30 or so, often when the rest of my warrior rush shows up, not turn 10 or whatever.

2. Flanking a city. I've found that the AI just about never puts city#2 in a good place for you. For one thing one side is always their capital, so you can't assault from there. With 5 warriors that basically means you need a perfect open position to assault the city, and that's almost never the case, coast, mountains, or just a ton of hills usually frustrates assault from at least one of the other vectors, so I can't figure out how to take that city consistently.

3. Not getting there in time. Even if I manage to avoid problems 1,2, I find that the warrior rush better be done by turn 40 or you're boned. Catherine will be up to 6 cities by then, anyone with an early UU will have it out, etc.

So apart from some tips on that, I'd also like a word or two on contingency plans if (when) the warrior rush fails miserably. Should I fall back the moment I see major BS, and perhaps take a militaristic city state or something instead?

 

[Martin Alvito]

Let's see:

1) The AI is now programmed to use Warriors to screen Workers. The best way to take a Worker usually is to use one Warrior to bait its Warriors to where you want them, then use the other coming from another direction to steal. Sometimes it will make completely boneheaded mistakes that give you an easy theft, but those are less common than they used to be. You also have to think about where you want to make your move. If you finish on a rough tile, you can survive a counterattack and a city shot. Any more heat than that will usually drop you.

2) I rarely get a five-pronged attack. It happens, but it's rare. More common is an assault from four sides with a single unit of backup. Unusually nasty terrain is the usual cause of failure. I had a game against England the other day where the second city was settled in a ring of hills two tiles thick with a river on one side, an Archer stationed in the city and Warriors fortified in the area. Not fun.

3) Yes, you'd better find someone quickly. Turn 40 is pretty much the deadline, although successfully stealing both Workers tends to extend that.

 

[Fragment]

Let's see:

1) The AI is now programmed to use Warriors to screen Workers. The best way to take a Worker usually is to use one Warrior to bait its Warriors to where you want them, then use the other coming from another direction to steal. Sometimes it will make completely boneheaded mistakes that give you an easy theft, but those are less common than they used to be. You also have to think about where you want to make your move. If you finish on a rough tile, you can survive a counterattack and a city shot. Any more heat than that will usually drop you.

2) I rarely get a five-pronged attack. It happens, but it's rare. More common is an assault from four sides with a single unit of backup. Unusually nasty terrain is the usual cause of failure. I had a game against England the other day where the second city was settled in a ring of hills two tiles thick with a river on one side, an Archer stationed in the city and Warriors fortified in the area. Not fun.

3) Yes, you'd better find someone quickly. Turn 40 is pretty much the deadline, although successfully stealing both Workers tends to extend that.

If you have the time, could you be bothered to elaborate with some commented screens, maybe in it's own thread? That would be awesome.

Regards.

EDIT Reasoning: You seem to approach this game rather like a game of chess. That intrigues me

 

[Rittmeyer]

I finally did pull out the warrior rush on deity. So I take back my doubts about it, though I'm still not sure it's the optimal strategy, since it seens pretty luck dependant and I'm not sure I could pull it out in many different situations (from the one I recently got).

But thanks for the advice in this matter, everyone.

 

[Varanid]

I was estatic when I got a spaceship in the 1910s...I feel like a noob now!

 

[Rittmeyer]

All Civ4 deity games were based on luck because you needed a very good starting position. Good strategy means minimizing the required luck, and as strategies go I think this one is pretty good, though you may have to restart a couple of times to get the early game right.

I really don't agree with that. There were guys in these forums betting deity consistently in not very good starting positions. There were unwinabble positions, but they were the exception, not the rule.

 

[pi-r8]

Has anybody tried doing this strategy (or something similiar) using Siam? Their UA means they can get by with just 1 maritime and cultural CS ally, and their UB also gives extra culture. For some reason it's available without a library prerequisite, too (I'm guessing that's a bug).

 

[Tarkin1980]

I just managed to get my first victory on Deity (my first Deity win in any version of civ, I was an Emperor player in Civ IV which shows how easy Civ V is) using pretty much the same tactic, except that I didn't finish until turn 283. I did get biology around turn 130-140 and steam power shortly afterwards but after that I got seriously bogged down.

I think my problem was that I couldn't manage to amass 4 policy picks by the time I hit industrial (I wanted to fill the Communism line of the Order tree in addition to the picks I spent on Freedom, Rationalism and Secularism).

Also the space ship construction was horribly slow. Apollo took me some 40 turns to build and the parts took about the same because I didn't have the tech to build them all simultaneously.

 

[Martin Alvito]

EDIT Reasoning: You seem to approach this game rather like a game of chess. That intrigues me

I've always treated openings in Civ series games like chess openings. Your choices are heavily constrained, but optimal paths toward a given goal exist.

I refer to chess terminology regularly because that game has the most developed language for discussing strategy.

Has anybody tried doing this strategy (or something similiar) using Siam?

You'd have serious problems getting Great Scientists quickly. Assuming you had six Universities by turn 105 and the rest by turn 120, you're looking at 18 extra Culture per turn for fifteen turns, then 45 extra per turn after that. But it takes about 2000 Culture to get the fourth and fifth policies, so you won't push through Freedom and catch the Babs' eighteen points per turn until around turn 140. That will cost you several Great Scientists.

You could scoop up two techs with Scientific Revolution instead, which would help. But you're going to be late getting to Apollo or late unlocking the last spaceship part if you go that route.

Your best bet would probably be a quick Hagia Sophia and Scientific Revolution; you'd also probably want to make some Trading Posts in your Science cities and work them for cash rather than go for Markets.

Also the space ship construction was horribly slow. Apollo took me some 40 turns to build and the parts took about the same because I didn't have the tech to build them all simultaneously.

The trick is to grow your production cities by pulling the Scientists after you pop a Great Scientist in that city. Doing that lets you get up around size 8-10, and you can then work nothing but Lumber Mills and Hills to get your Factories up and build parts. I suppose you could probably grow them even larger if you used lots of Maritimes and "avoid growth" in pure Science cities.

 

[Buccaneer]

There is no one at CFC that consistently posts intelligent and thoughtful posts as much as Martin Alvito. I consider him one of the main reasons I keep coming back here. Keep up the good work.

 

[Martin Alvito]

There is no one at CFC that consistently posts intelligent and thoughtful posts as much as Martin Alvito. I consider him one of the main reasons I keep coming back here. Keep up the good work.

Thank you for the very high praise! Now if only I could get my students to be this happy when I criticize their work...

 

[Numi]

Looking at a picture of your civ, which from outward appearances looks rather puny. This makes me fear even puny civs! Now they all must die!!!

 

[alpaca]

Thank you for the very high praise! Now if only I could get my students to be this happy when I criticize their work...

Try writing Haiku-Criticism, maybe it works? Worth a try