Deity: Tech Race & Ideology Pressure

[Nybelung]

I've progressed naturally through the game, starting at the lowest difficulty and moving up after 3-5 wins in a row, and I have had the most success with science, that is until I arrived at Deity level.

I try to perfectly time Oxford -> Radio, so I am the 1st one to pick ideology. I pick my "thing" but I only get to enjoy it for a little while... The first AI picking ideology after me is usually my biggest competitor, and in 99% of games it has a HUGE, bloated, empire. Of course, it never wants to pick my ideology! If I go Freedom or Autocracy it picks Order, if I take Order, they take Autocracy etc... Really annoying but I can deal with one AI.
Problems come a few turns later, when every single AI still in the game starts taking the bloated ones ideology. In just two turns I go from the happiest empire on the planet to a pile of smoking rubble... filled with rebels and engulfed in a civil war with absolutely zero chance of growth or war against the big, unwanted, neighbour.

What am I doing wrong?
Should I deliberately hamper my science and production by delaying both the Radio and factories until the big AI empires pick their ideology? Letting the AI catch up with me on Modern Era doesn't sound smart, but neither does switching to a random ideology...

There is also a 3rd problem, IF I take the same ideology like the AI bunch they get significant tourism bonuses towards me and I put myself in danger of losing my game if the other AIs didn't build enough culture to counter the bloated empire.

 

[Moriarte]

Welcome to the forums, Nybelung!

There are three ways to handle your problem i can think of:

1. Prioritise Drama & Poetry. Get the writers guild asap, fill both slots and settle your writers in amphitheaters, all the while buying open borders from biggest cultural runaways. Same goes for the artist's guild. Mathematically, the most dangerous tourism influence comes between t.50-t.150, so this is the time you would want to keep cultural city state alliances. If you do it all right, you should be on par culturally, or close to break even. Winning world's fair will make you completely safe in this scheme of things.

2. Save your writers for bulbing after you win World's Fair, so that you can quickly fill rationalism and slingshot yourself so far ahead in tech that happiness is going to be abundant and discontent will be negligible. This is due to gigantic culture inflow from world's fair + writers hampering incoming tourism. You would want CS alliances and other lux-lux deals present.

The second way is more advanced as it requires deep knowledge of all mechanics. Personally, i prefer the mix of the two, as my favourite play style is domination. An artist and a writer i may settle, the rest of the bunch i save for bulbing, because most of the tourism is supplied by those i conquer.

You shouldn't under any circumstance hamper your science. Try thinking up positive actions, not negative ones. If i were you, i'd first try method no.1 and see if you can achieve some sort of parity by emphasising culture and tourism a little more.

 

[sun8119]

Usually this works for me:
Save GWs till WF about 3 of them by the time I win WF. After winning WF ally at least 1 CS and preferably make friends with another cultural CS. Also GA helps. After 8 or more turns burn them all. to get at least 2-3 idelogies/tenets. Depending on my current situation I pick at least 1 happiness tenet.

Also:
Send caravans to culture leaders.
Buy open borders but do not sell your borders.
Send diplomat to culture leader(s).

You need some tourism too, I often build Eiffel Tower.

-10 to -15 (in rare situation maybe 20 or so) is what I get from pressure which is fine considering my happiness buffer

 

[Nybelung]

Thank you, I've been a reading this forum for a while.

Winning Worlds Fair with only 3-4 settlements is next to impossible on Deity, or at least to my little science empire. The AIs are crazy about that thing and they have a huge hammer advantage, so I consider myself very lucky if I manage to take silver reward. I often try do everything to delay the Fair, but sometimes it gets voted early and the AI completes it almost in just a few turns so I cant even take silver. In my last Siam game Russia had more production in Moscow then my entire empire together and took gold reward even before I for brozne. trollolo.
So building my strategy around WF is not an option. Or at least I don't see how it is possible.

I do get writers early, but I did not focus on maintaining open borders or sucking up to cultural CSs... The CS alliances require some luck, but I'll certainly do the open borders thingie every time. Thx for the tip.


It's hard to find time for building lots of culture buildings, and even harder to spam archaeologists against Deity. There are lots of other things to build, and if there is an early war going on I'm basically at zero culture for a while.
Would it be smart to pick one settlement for all culture buildings/nat.wonders or to spread guilds equally around the empire? Or perhaps to completely give up on some other things, like faith buildings? Science focus pretty much leaves no space for culture.

 

[tetley]

It sounds like others are having luck bulbing Radio, picking Order to get the half-price factories, build them, then switch ideology. It stinks having to switch, but if it's going to happen, then this is the way to go down.

Regarding the archaeologist spam, this is a case where you can exploit the AI's unfair bonuses against himself: capture his. I found I can sleep my military right on top of all the sites, denying him. But the AI still sees sites, so he keeps building more archaeologists. Now you can DoW him and capture 5 archaeologists; maybe even a site right within his own borders. That's a heckuva lot less warmonger penalty than puppeting cities.

 

[redwings1340]

I enjoy trying to go heavy patronage and getting my ideology to be the world ideology in the world congress, with luck before most civilizations even have an ideology. If you can successfully do that (I've done it once on deity, but with Poland), then your problems can be solved no matter how much culture and tourism you have (which I tend to ignore in my games).

It's tough though, and if Greece is in the game, this strategy may be a bit tougher to make work. It still times itself very will with oxford bulbing radio though.

 

[Nybelung]

I guess this is just how things need to be. Battling their culture and ideology is the only challenge I seem to have. It would be a boring 15 hours of "next turn" without it.
I will try to play a more cultural game next time, but I'm always afraid of them being ahead in technology, and finishing space ship parts before I could stop them.

Spoiler :

^My last Immortal Siam game. I'm the autocratic "bright yellow" empire in the corner with 70 negative happiness from culture pressure. I was determined not to bow. Notice how I control both Moscow and Atilla's Court, and I have port and missile launch settlements next to both of them. I took both in one bloody campaign across both oceans. I started with 4 battleships and one hired privateer and later added 1 more battleship, 3 destroyers and 3 submarines. I took Moscow first, and burned down 8 of their colonies and occupied 2 city states in the process. Atilla managed to get flight before I came for him, he stole it from me actually. Fighting him was scary business, he had his Court enclosed with 4 port cities packed with stacks of planes and an infinte number of frigates and privateers against my small armada. Luckily, his court fell one turn after he started bringing submarines and destroyers. I took it down with one last shell and captured it with one almost burning destroyer. He tried to recapture after peace deal expired, but at that time it was too late, I already had XCOMs, A bombs and nuclear submarines ready to deploy and all my ships were fully repaired.

I launched my people to the stars in the year 5971 of the First Era, and the 1st year of the great Nybelungian Age.


It's time to attack Deity, again. I'll try your tips and maybe survive this time.

 

[Memoryjar]

Winning Worlds Fair with only 3-4 settlements is next to impossible on Deity, or at least to my little science empire.

Not really, with experience, it's more a 50/50 try.

You'll need something like 750 to 900 hammers to win. Survey your manufactured goods in demographics. If you are first to 3rd, it's possible.
Also, you can set production focus in your cities (don't forget «reset tiles»). It's something like 5 to 10 turn of slow growth, but it makes it.
Also, you can bribe production leaders to engage war. It will distract them to build WF.

 

[Nybelung]

I don't think I was ever 1st in production on Immortal+, and being 3rd doesn't help me much if the first two runaway AIs have 3x or often 4x my number of hammers.
I'm honestly "all in" with science, everything else usually suffers.

 

[Browd]

Bribing the most productive AIs to war each other while the WF is being built is the best route, IMO, to winning the WF on higher levels.

 

[Sessy]

^ really useful tactic on deity, and not just to win WF, because that would require your cities to have more than decent hammers, but to just survive with aggressive neighbors