Deity Trajan is the bane of my existence

[Myth and Legend]

Guys. Is playing as Gorgo somehow hardcoded to spawn Trajan next to you?

Tried it several times, he's always near me, maybe it was really bad luck? His legions shred hoplites and take anything that is not my capital in record time.

I can't placate him and conquer the other Ai that spawns near me on Standard size because he awlays hates my guts because of the low territory malus. What do?

 

[Onii-chan]

You can always choose what AI civs are in the game if you're superstitious

 

[Myth and Legend]

More to the point is how to survive Deity Trajan + another random civ (worst was Peter with 40000 horsemen) without crippling yourself early on?

 

[Onii-chan]

Well generally the best way to deal with early aggression in Deity in Civ tends to be spamming archers, putting them behind the city and getting up walls quickly since the AI sucks at handling them properly

 

[ddd123]

I think trajan is like all in at deity, sure the only way to go is attack before he gets to spam legions, so you spam archers and go!
You either can win there the game or if you cant maybe you can get a good peace terms just in time for legions, survive legion era and try another attack with xbows+muskets.
One thing I noticed (maybe rng, cant be sure) is that rome is often at war, maybe cause of declaring on me or dunno, but still... he is often in negative with other leaders so another way is joint war or wait for him to get dowed by others and join to abuse the situation.

Surely all leaders that have some op early UU are tricky as neighbours at deity.

 

[Haggbart]

Yeah he spawned next to me in my deity Gorgo game. He denounced me first, then he was all friendly before declaring a surprise war. Only thing that surprised me was how late it was. He tried to attack me with a whole lot of legion corps and armies, but my crossbowmen made short work of them. Beelined to AT crew (didn't have niter), field cannon and artillery and avsolutely smashed his antique army.

 

[Roller123]

interesting, considering there is terrain bias, maybe there is also a civ bias. And it does make some sense to put Greece with Rome together. It it possible to check it by starting several games and cheat the fog away to check who is nearby

 

[redwings1340]

Trajan gets some insane bonuses on deity, assuming he settles his initial cities he starts with three monuments and roads between all three cities.

He won a religious victory in my first deity game, I don't think I was ever in a position to take him on, he was ahead of me in technology and production the entire game, and I didn't have a great army. While I was able to conquer Germany early in this game (with Trajan's help), I was then sandwiched between legions and Varus, which made any more early conquest almost impossible. I might have been able to win a cultural victory eventually, but couldn't do it fast enough.

 

[Francis Xavier]

Haven't had problems dealing with Trajan yet. The only Deity game where he spawned as my neighbor I randomly got Gilgamesh, so when I saw him as neighbor the war started and he was conquered right about when he had legions. The map was like 13-14 war carts vs. 3 legions. The other deity game I had with him when I got Gorgo / Greece, the shuffle did I think some kind of continents variant because I had a mini land mass to my own and Rome shared with India / Germany / China, and Rome was friends with me the whole game because of my empire size.

I will say though, when I was fighting off the Legions with War Carts, it was definitely a next-man up bring them down type situation. No elegance at all, just overwhelming force to knock him down. That game in particular I remember being behind on infrastructure because of that war - normally I catch up to the AI by about turn 125-140ish, that time I didn't catch up to the AI until turn 180ish.

 

[stormtrooper412]

it's much, MUCH wiser to invest in early army then cities. In fact around turn 50-60 you might get a developed city with a district or two

 

[CaiusDrewart]

If you start right next to Trajan, you can kill him with Archers before he gets to Legions. Don't wait for Hoplites, which aren't needed--just beeline Archery. Building 5-6 Slingers/Archers and perhaps a second Warrior to take out the AI won't cripple your economy--far from it. You'll grab three or four Roman cities with great infrastructure, and perhaps also some Builders and Settlers if you're fortunate. It'll really get a snowball going.

 

[Iberian]

I feel bad on rushing the AI early. Every time I do it cripples them even if I just kill their early settlers. As you said though leaving Trajan or Frederick around is risky. Both of them have outclassed the other AI's in my 4 games.

 

[redwings1340]

I feel bad on rushing the AI early. Every time I do it cripples them even if I just kill their early settlers. As you said though leaving Trajan or Frederick around is risky. Both of them have outclassed the other AI's in my 4 games.

Yeah, those two definitely are upper tier civs under AI control. They've always managed to get pretty solid empires when they've been in my game.

 

[Francis Xavier]

China has historically done pretty good in my games too. Usually at the end game, if there's a Civ in danger of winning, it's China or Germany. Arabia tends to be a threat too.

 

[Nefelia]

There is a cultural start bias, from what I have read in other topics. European countries will tend to start closer together (this includes the US, and maybe Egypt at well.

 

[SharTeel]

Well generally the best way to deal with early aggression in Deity in Civ tends to be spamming archers, putting them behind the city and getting up walls quickly since the AI sucks at handling them properly

good luck taking down tortoise promoted legions (50combat str defending from ranged attacks) with non promoted archers...

you either kill him earlier, or pray that he doesn't attack you before you get knights

 

[Mustakrakish]

I haven't noticed any culturally linked starts. Also, who's Varus?