Diety for noobs

[Brandonian]

hello everyone, this would be my first post ever...i am back playing civ 4 after a couple year break, WOW got ahold of me and it took a few years to loosen its icy grip on my game addicted personality. but im back! i've been an active browser of the forums now and previous to WOW. i first started playing again about a month ago and started again at immortal where i left off and it was brutal to get used to again. i managed to pull off a few convincing wins in the rifleman>tank era and decided to move up to diety after watching what seemed like 20 or so hours of Absolute Zero's videos which gave me the confidence to make the jump, and i knew with what i learned from him that immortal would be gravy after that. but diety is a whole different animal all together and though i am holding my own in my current game, i don't know if i can pull off a win. a little story on how the game has gone, goes as follows. i started off on my own psuedo penninsula with room for about 6 cities including my capital. after settling i had a chance to get off 2 more cities before my penninsula was also being settled by spain and india. i took spains religion and got my 4th city out. spains religion is judaism, which most of the continent took. oh yeah settings are pangea epic speed no huts or events. india founded buddhism which gave me my in for some land. i rushed some swords and axes out asap and took his two closest cities to my north ignoring the one in my borders deciding to save it for later when my attack stalled. it worked and i ended up with 3-4 new cities and a totally crashed economy with a tech disadvantage that i'd never had to deal with before. so time to work the AI like A.Z. and i started teching where the A.I. didn't. everyone else on the continent was cool with my attack on asoka so i felt like i was home free. i made peace once, regrouped and went for his jugular with cats and swords, all i had was iron and copper, no horses to be found. i got his capital and his buddha city and just as i did that i got fuedalism and vassaled him. right as i was finishing him off for the vassal the ottomans joined in at a last ditch effort to gain some land, i beat him to it got all the land and denied mehmed any of it and took the vassal for myself who, india, had a nice tech lead on me to boot. india was more than willing to give me techs and crap trades for techs i needed. so i had all this land and no money no beakers making about +6 per turn slider at 0, and a huge tech disadvantage. i was fighting against longbows with swords and cats at the end of the fight. i was also gifted a few key techs during my war with india that i didn't expect.
Brennus of the Celts game me construction who was on the other end of the continent. so i went into cottage spam and tried to work the tech tree and the bartering table like a champ and arrived at gunpowder at a decent clip, powered through to rifleing and mehmed decided that newly aquired land i had would look better in his hands so he DOW'd on me and came after one of the first cities i took from india. he failed miserably, my rifles sliced right through him. and i took a city from him. with my cats, trebs and rifles, cavalry. so can't remember why but persia had since warred with spain and vassaled her, persia was hindu and didn't like spain. Strangely enough mahmed of the ottomans was judaism with me so that was wierd him attacking me, after i took one of mehmed's cities i made peace with him and immediately DOW'd on persia who was away attacking my closed ally Brennus of Celtia. i love'd him after he gifted me key techs to take down asoka. i didn't want to see him fall. persia is STRONG. i took his closest city and peaced him and went back after mehmed for another grudge match and thats where i stopped, i picked a fight with the BULLY and lived to tell the story.. anyway im gonna post saves and so forth when i get home tonight. holla at me if you have anything to add and if you think i played my politics right. any holes in my story....etc...i now have 2 of mehmed's citys and one of persia's 20 pop cities feeling good but i need some advice on where to go next, im totally at peace right now, with my peace treaty with mehmed out and about 2-3 turns into my peace with persia. should i keep pressing with persia who has a nice tech lead on me or finish off mehmed who i've severely weakened. the war with persia might not go too well if i push it but im not sure

 

[Brandonian]

sorry forgot to mention im playing as Mansa Musa the warmonger!!! sorry about bad spelling, im in a hurry trying to get out of the office....

 

[mintegar]

for the love of god, please put in some linebreaks. I refuse to read that wall of text

 

[cseanny]

A save is best.

 

[Brandonian]

sorry for the long winded post. anyway i'll post the save im at and the original save. i'd also like some advice as to what i should do next. im moving my stack to DOW mehmed again and take bursa cause he was dumb enough to open borders again after that last war and it is very lightly defended while still having 9 turns to defend susa from persia if he DOWs me again. brennus will undoubtedly bring me back in a war with persia again with a request i won't be able to refuse due to loyalty and a lust for more land and maybe to free spain from cyrus's clutches.

 

[Brandonian]

Sorry again for the OP, i got out of hand, its too much to edit. im scared to look at it again

 

[Grashopa]

Persia and Spain are the most backward. And you are pretty backward. So I'd rather go after them as Mehmed could have infantry in less than 15 turns. You have no way to stop a stack of his if he actually tried to attack you.

Get in slavery and whip the crap out of your cities! You have enough pop for an army 3 times that size.

 

[Brandonian]

really! how about nationalism and whipping at the same time? so i should crush persia and leave mehmed alone? if mehmed, is so dangerous, should i wipe him off of the continent and leave him to the islands? he has a super weak standing army, then go after cyrus or what? i at least think reducing my shared border with him with another war might be worth it.

i am backward because of getting choked out early on and being forced into war with india. so overwhelming force then sounds good to me.

 

[BurN]

Hey Brandonian, I don`t have much advice on how to proceed because to me it seems like a big mess (if you`ll excuse me). I think you seem to lack a general gameplan.

@current situation:
- You had a marble resource for almost a thousand years, yet you did not build National Epic or Heroic epic anywhere!
- You are not generating gpp`s.
- You captured MoM. Once again, you should have build NE and should have generated more GP`s.
- There`s no real reason to let Asoka research astro. I think you should`ve send him for constitution/democracy or something. (emancipation is already causing you unhappiness) Or make him research steel.
- Running caste system doesn`t really serve much of a purpose atm. You`re not running specialists, you don`t have that many workshops and you have unhappiness. Whip!

@start:
- Moving the warrior somewhere south reveals tundra/coast which makes it highly unlikely an AI is south. I`ve said this in another thread as well.. on pang maps I think it`s worth it to settle the capital towards the AI. I would move the settler somewhere north. (2N would grab you the corn as well. Both the food would be in the second ring which makes sharing it easier). Usually this will gain you more land.
- I don`t think FIN serves much of a purpose on this land but you do have good food resources. I`d think it would`ve been better to rely more on food/specialists.
- If you get big religious blocks it`s usually not a very good idea to go early warring. There will be a lot of trading and once you fall behind it`s a pain to catch up. Instead I think it`s better to trademonger and work your way to early lib and expand with cuirs/riffles/cannons. You could`ve easily taken out the small sized Isabella and then crush a backwards Cyrus.
- Actually it`s usually not a good idea to do early warring on deity. Too much risk. If you can get 6 reasonable cities on pangeae.. that`s good enough till mid-game.


From the position as it is I would probably turtle up with all those cottages and see if I could land internet and go for a lategame slugfest. I hope you don`t feel I`m being a bit too hard on you with the criticism and I wish you good luck with the game.

 

[Brandonian]

yeah, i see that i made a mess of things, but i kept on truckin because of my land grab success. I figured if i bang my head against this brickwall long enough i'd actually make a dent in it. i usually make alot more GP than that but i got super choked and felt my back against the wall. decided to go full tilt production. went like russia in WW2 quantity over quality.

i actually played a few more turns last night and grabbed Bursa from ottomans. this backs mehmed into the corner up north and gives me a short border with him. he only has 4 rifles in each of his last two cities. with a short border with mehmed it should be fairly easy to defend. or i may just knock him off the continent and into the islands.

so i now have 2 of mehmed's cities, which are really nice and one of persias, i have a faily large army to take mehmed's last 3 cities if i want them and persia is still busy with the celts.

i don't know if i can turtle up because i don't have the defenses to keep it. i want to press till they get machineguns unless you guys think its a bad idea. by then i should have much shorter borders to defend.

thanks for the responses guys i may try this map again after im done depending on if i win or fail. diety is a hard nut to crack.

 

[raxid]

also to add to the "presentation" side of things. It helps us deity players who, for whatever reason, can't open your saves if you show 2-3 important screens. We can infer a lot from those in some cases.

It helps with being able to leverage diplo/tech stuff (maybe being able to suggest bribe X against Y) or micro mistakes etc.