Deity Tips

[stevenburns]

I forgot to add i bulid a Mids in meentime so my inicial stack should be bigger normaly.
Probably more metal units hmm .... i think i had 2 axes with this inital stack but not sure of it, dont remeber.

275BC

Spoiler :

I took out 3 hes cities and lost overall all i think 4 cats and 1 CR3 axe

Now i see that i have bulid 3 Wes so yea my inicial stack was 3 cats 2 we, 2 axes and 2 skirmishers,

Did you finish the Mids or did you go for some failgold in spare turns with nothing necessary to build? Even with stone you are lacking a lot of hammers your attack is missing now.
As I see you play Mansa the early scientists were a little harder to come by.

Do you remember your initial tech path and can you post a screen shot of your cap? Its easier to say what could have been done differently then.

 

[Seraiel]

@ yyeah:

Mids with Stone are 3 War Elephants and 2 Catapults, Mids without Stone are just way too much. Also, don't need the Mids, because you don't need the Happy-cap, and Police-State has no time to pay back if attacking at 500 BC, so I'd gamble on conquering them, shouldn't be too difficult on a Standard sized map, but even without, doesn't matter.

I think you need to get better at building troops, if you got Construction at around 800-900 BC and have 9 troops at 250 BC. Really try for 15, 10 Elephants, 5 Catapults. Use 2 Workers and let them chop on consecutive turns to get 1 War Elephant every 2 turns, whip on turn 3 or 4 to get another one, that way building up 15 in 500y is possible. Take your capital to produce the Elephants and build a Barracks and a Stable in it, use the other 2-3 cities to build the Catapults and maybe help with some 0 or 3 XP Elephants if the capital isn't strong enough. Try to do with 3 Workers at max, more is too expensive.

225 at 275 BC is really good btw., as some cities are still revolting. I'm impressed .

 

[yyeah]

CRE does the trick. Two or maybe four scienists outperform even FIN cottages early on as you cant bulb a cottage.
Granaries arent needed that early. They are still the most effective building but without the whip you have your first cities at happy cap when they finish the granary. So you dont gain anything substantial.

No

If you would running spec. you cant work tiles obv. witch meens less settlers, less workers !!! witch meens less choops > less army
no greanaries less whips -> less army
no cottages -> later construcion -> laters CS -> leater Edu ( cot needs to grow !!!)

This changes everything.

Did you finish the Mids or did you go for some failgold in spare turns with nothing necessary to build? Even with stone you are lacking a lot of hammers your attack is missing now.
As I see you play Mansa the early scientists were a little harder to come by.

Do you remember your initial tech path and can you post a screen shot of your cap? Its easier to say what could have been done differently then.

Like i mentioned above iam playing HOF game so i have 2 gold start and i didnt have to bulb math i just self tech everything and used my 1st GS for academy.

If you bulb math, you gain around 14 turns ? and this is preety similar what i gained working on 2 gold.

Offcourse i have ealier Cs here Edu etc. but this is not a case we talking here about Construcion date.

Yea my attack is missing but i split my stack and take out Ollyta... (something) with 2 swords, we and cat. I have to bombard this city for like 3 turns ;/ so split was reasonable.

My tech path was Agg-AH-Writing-HBR-Math-Constr. ( i belive )
I could skip Pottery becouse of this 2 gold.

Spoiler :

I forgot yea i had a little bit lower inicial stack becouse of Mids, but after Mids i switched in Police State so later on i catched up with inits count.

 

[stevenburns]

Ouch, impressive start. Definitely lets you skip the math bulb. Still should have skipped the Mids, imo. Seraiel explained, why.

 

[Seraiel]

That start is easily one for The Awesome Starts Collection. Plz make sure to post it, should the game fail or not get #1 for whatever reasons yyeah .

 

[yyeah]

Ill post it

Ok mids are debatable, but i knew i have enought for him and a iam Spi Mids are just too tempting i had to give it a shoot i wouldnt recomend it to everyone tho.

 

[Seraiel]

By looking closer,I ask myself is, why you took Ragnar as an opponent, he's the worst unit-spammer of all AIs with a unit-build-ratio of 10/10. Justinian and Suleiman are also horrible because of IMP. Seems like you're lucky, because nobody of them started besides you, otherwise, Justinian and Suleiman would probably have gotten 13-15 cities. Are you already familiar with "CIV Illustrated #1: Know your enemy" ? Setting up the map right is one of the biggest and most important decisions when playing for HoF.

 

[yyeah]

By looking closer,I ask myself is, why you took Ragnar as an opponent, he's the worst unit-spammer of all AIs with a unit-build-ratio of 10/10. Justinian and Suleiman are also horrible because of IMP. Seems like you're lucky, because nobody of them started besides you, otherwise, Justinian and Suleiman would probably have gotten 13-15 cities. Are you already familiar with "CIV Illustrated #1: Know your enemy" ? Setting up the map right is one of the biggest and most important decisions when playing for HoF.

For fun

I was tired of same ugly faces after Guntlet needed to change something.

 

[Revent]

Alpha beeline is amazing with the right circumstances. What did Isabella (of all leaders ) attack with? 5 phants might have been enough to defend.

She had around 14-15 units. 3-4 spears, 2-3 archers, some chariots and axes/swords.

Did you have gold start ?



I think you are too used to HOF games Sera .
If you going for Construcion rush, allmoust never you will have math in time not mention construcion. Unless you can choose oponents or you have Mansa and hes for going Math.

Thats what Revent did is strong play maybe bulbing math is not efficient but ais reaching Feudalism v early on deity what makes Construcion obsolated preety fast ( thats why i dont realy like Constr rush) so it makes a huge diference if you strike faster sometimes allso you can catch ai still in expanding mode... witch meens not so many units.

Why i asked about gold start becouse what i dont like in this play is deleying Pottery for so long witch meens no eco ( moust importand thing on deity economy), and no grenaries ( whips not efficient), hard to pull out good rush without greanaries ...

Nope, I've done it twice now! Agri as starting tech is a MUST for going down this route. Gold not necessary, the early scientists from early writing really do help and with a maths bulb much quicker. Managed to have a monopoly on Writing, Alpha, HBR, Maths and Construction in both games!

 

[Rusten]

Thread already very long so only replying to opening post.

The jump from IMMORTAL to DEITY is absolutely massive. The struggle is real. If I don't expand quickly, I tend to get boxed into three or four cities (two of which arent even good) and if I expand to five or six cities, my economy completely crashes. It feels like my normal playstyle is not capable of handling Deity.

Don't play Pangea maps when learning deity difficulty. It's not the best way to learn in my opinion. Play something like Fractal or Continents instead (mix it up).

Commerce/economy (assuming poor start): You have to emphasise commerce a lot early on. One tip would be to work lake/unimproved clam+fish+crab more in the early game. In this circumstance it beats out for instance grassland forest which I see a lot of people work in screenshots. Other important methods include pre-roading to your first city for instant trade route and/or settling it really close with overlap so that it is connected by coast/river. On very poor starts consider "rushing" an early GS and simply settle it in your capital (not academy). Some starts have "no" commerce, but you always have food resources, so run those 2 early scientists with a library.

Also, build less infrastructure. Your last few cities should be minimalist unless you've already secured enough land to win the game and you can just sit idle. Make them productive immediately. Something like granary+library -> wealth for instance (library only if it will be running scientists).

I would also not get too hung up on tricks like overflow into gold. This is not required to win on deity. If you're reliant on these to win then you are doing something more basic wrong. Look at the big picture and only get what you need. "Keep it simple, stupid".

And the best way to learn how to win on deity is to lose on deity. Not to stomp immortal games.

 

[Rusten]

Also, one of the biggest differences between the AI and the human is that we can put all our effort into a single moment which is why we can afford to be behind. They don't have our burst and ability to synchronize/harmonize. We can get a GM+trade mission to upgrade a bunch of HAs into cuirassiers and immediately attack. We can draft riflemen in all of our cities for massive unhappiness to hit a time window. Don't play like the AI. Find out exactly what you need (the big picture) and itemize for this decisive moment. If you can learn to do this then you will stand a good chance to beat deity.

 

[stevenburns]

Nice to read some veteran advice, Rusten. Maybe snaaty and all the other long time Deity players are still lurking here and there to share some of their knowledge that got lost in the archives over the years.

 

[Revent]

Thread already very long so only replying to opening post.

Don't play Pangea maps when learning deity difficulty. It's not the best way to learn in my opinion. Play something like Fractal or Continents instead (mix it up).

Commerce/economy (assuming poor start): You have to emphasise commerce a lot early on. One tip would be to work lake/unimproved clam+fish+crab more in the early game. In this circumstance it beats out for instance grassland forest which I see a lot of people work in screenshots. Other important methods include pre-roading to your first city for instant trade route and/or settling it really close with overlap so that it is connected by coast/river. On very poor starts consider "rushing" an early GS and simply settle it in your capital (not academy). Some starts have "no" commerce, but you always have food resources, so run those 2 early scientists with a library.

Also, build less infrastructure. Your last few cities should be minimalist unless you've already secured enough land to win the game and you can just sit idle. Make them productive immediately. Something like granary+library -> wealth for instance (library only if it will be running scientists).

I would also not get too hung up on tricks like overflow into gold. This is not required to win on deity. If you're reliant on these to win then you are doing something more basic wrong. Look at the big picture and only get what you need. "Keep it simple, stupid".

And the best way to learn how to win on deity is to lose on deity. Not to stomp immortal games.

I feel honoured to have the legendary Rusten comment on my thread (again)!

Thank you for all the tips. Indeed, I do only build granaries and libraries in my cities although if I get early MC, most also get a forge.

I will definitely apply these tips and keep practising on Deity and see how it goes!

Thank you all for the help!!!

 

[Rusten]

Here's an example of what I mentioned regarding commerce/economy from a SG I played. We had a strict variant and needed a lot of commerce early for a quick GLH.

Spoiler :

With this start we decided to settle 1N. One reason was the extra grassland hills and the other was:

[Improved] Clam is not so amazing anyway, especially early on when we have irrigated corn already. The reasoning behind the work boat would be to have it ready for city #2. If we put our 2nd city 1W of the fish it will be hooked up to our capital with fishing. If the work boat is ready that city will bring in 5, 1 and 5 instantly (+1 or 2 maintenance).

The 2nd city would also have cows and a grassland hill in the first ring which means no need to make a monument (possibility of loaning another hill from Bibracte). It will grow quickly and could support our expansion while Bibracte gets the GLH.

Having your 2nd city be instantly productive like that is a huge boon on deity. You can either continue expansion at a faster pace, construct a wonder you normally couldn't have and/or work "inefficient" tiles in order to boost for instance commerce (the bottleneck for this game early on). In that game there was only 1 direction to expand anyway, but I'm sure you get the point. This probably would've been the city of choice even if there were several good options.

edit: I should add that having a 2nd city like this is a huge boon on any difficulty. But only on deity is it as apparent and sometimes necessary.

 

[shpeka]

Maybe this is the thread where someone will help me find the whip-overflow-for-a-one-turn-world-wonder trick.

I seem unable to replicate it.

 

[Seraiel]

Maybe this is the thread where someone will help me find the whip-overflow-for-a-one-turn-world-wonder trick.

I seem unable to replicate it.

1. You whip several buildings so the Overflow adds from one turn onto the next.

2. You can only have as much overflow in total, as the city produces , or as much the last building costed.

If you want to 1T a World Wonder, you need a lot of buildings to generate that much overflow. Where is the problem? I described the overflow-stacking-method in detail in the city-specialization-guide (link in signature) .

 

[shpeka]

1. You whip several buildings so the Overflow adds from one turn onto the next.

2. You can only have as much overflow in total, as the city produces , or as much the last building costed.

If you want to 1T a World Wonder, you need a lot of buildings to generate that much overflow. Where is the problem? I described the overflow-stacking-method in detail in the city-specialization-guide (link in signature) .

Thanks. This link was exactly what I have been searching for. I know I had read it but I didn't remember where.