Discussion: Beating deity without lump sum trading?

[Zodan_Mir]

I love this change as the lump sum trading was too easy to exploit before. Funding your early expansion through resource sales has been a required strategy on deity until now. Also it was easy to tell if someone was going to DoW you early and then sell them whatever resources and gpt you had to get all their gold to then buy units/walls.

This way DoF really means something and is worth caring about. I think the OP is being too pessimistic because my impression from what I've seen of BNW (don't have it yet) is that many of the AI will offer DoF early on; so you can still get lump sum trades - they just require you to be nice and care about the diplomacy.

I have to agree. Lump sum gold trading in G&K was hideously boring, predictable, and lame. Moreover, Deity games were often easier (in my opinion) than emperor/immortal games due to the fact that AI's in Deity simply had more gold laying around--gold which you could easily take from them with a couple clicks on the diplomacy screen.

BNW seems to have 'normalized' a lot of the lame mechanics found in previous incarnations of Civ 5, so that now things seems to evolve in natural ways. Conflicts are based on an actual build-up of pressure (religious, political, etc.), and not simply the result of some schizoid need to wipe out the nearest civ ... just because you (or the AI) can. (Of course, this does still happen--it's just not 'required' of every civ now.) The same goes for diplomatic dealings. There is a gradual build up of both power and pressure as each civ slowly develops their economy and moves toward a certain set of ideological tenets.

I, for one, am happy to see the early lump-sum gold trading lameness go away. There's nothing "hard" about fleecing the other civs of their artificially inflated/Deity gold, and then snowballing your own civ toward an easy win. It may look good for a "Let's Play" title, but that's about it. Now that you have to actually play a c.3500 B.C. civ the way that it would actually play out (i.e., with few starting resources, few friends, etc.), the early game is a lot more interesting. Before, you didn't have much of a choice--or a reason not to destroy your nearest neighbor. Now, with the new trade and diplomacy systems, you have to be more careful about going to war in your backyard.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Justice: FYI, according to the tooltips, the Science increase does hit on Puppetted cities, and is explicitly stated as such.

So warlike expansion does not avoid that issue.

 

[EYGuy]

Civ V is the first title to halt your growth in a city where you're building a Settler.

In Civ II it stopped your growth while building a settler, and cost your city 1 pop (or disbanded 1 pop cities).

In Civ III it may or may not have stopped your growth (I forgot), but it cost your city 2 pop.

In Civ IV both settlers and workers stopped your growth.

Civ V has causes the least childbirth pain, if you consider settlers your children.

 

[Deau]

Dave covered it very well.

However, I think it just means that CB rush is no longer the all-in-one solution to deity. As a tradeoff however, the devs gave us a great "catching-up" mechanic via trades BPT. In super early game, they are extremely powerful for the human player. On top of that, the 5% science nerf per city actually hinders the AI more than the human on deity. My current only play felt really weird. I caught up on tech slightly later than through GnK but have had crippled BPT with only 2 cities, going for cultural victory yet retaining #1 tech in demography up to my current turn 215 with only 425 ish bpt.

However, I am somewhat more scared at domination victory. My very small attempt at Ghandi with 8 XBs, 4pikes and 1knight around turn 120 (he had knights, pikes and CBs) was an absurd failure...not to his knights(killed all horse sources first) or to his pikes, but simply because capital+oligarchy+CB could one shot my XBs... I'm hoping this was just a sad function of his extreme growth.

 

[tommynt]

I won my last 2 G+K deity games without any trading at all (not even lux for lux deals) so I expect no lump sum deals will not be a big probelm

But then I m not sure if i want bother with it - I play civ to be king of the world not friend of the world.

Game is forcing players more and more into peaceful boring trading approach.
The benefits of wars and expending your empire just dont match the gains of good relations with trading all your double stuff away and big cities at all ...
And this with still brokken ai Diplo were you even get warmonger and hate penalty from civ when you dow their opponents ..

R remember civ1 games where I settled all of America, 1 Civ all of Asia and one all of Africa and Europe - now all I need to do is settle London and sending my trade ships around and finaly I win, just because London is so much better as all US and Russia together

 

[Deau]

They have definitely overdone peaceful victories. I finally just finished my first deity game as t282 diplo with a 2 city trad opener as morocco and there were probably 10-15 wars throughout which Attila DoWed Ghandi 6 times or so.

I had hopes to take Ghandi's capital early renaissance for his few CV(my original plan) wonders that I had missed but the slower teching pace (city defense era bonus + additional pop) is making warmongering extremely rough until artilleries or flight. I have always liked bomber rush peaceful/aggressive strat but not in a scenario where early game war is near impossible.

 

[The Pilgrim]

They have definitely overdone peaceful victories.

I feel the same. 2 games, not a single DoW. That's just wrong.

Overall, no free ATM start feels much more balanced and natural. The only thing that bugs me is that befriending others seems to be pretty random. In first game I had no DoF's until ~t180. In second one some popped out at ~t80 and the rest joined shortly after. However, at this point I don't need ATM and have a self sufficient economy. So I don't really get the DoF requirement for lump sum trades. It just increases the number of rerolls for HoF. If you're lucky to get an early DoF - good for you, if you are not - reroll. Removing all lump sums deals would have made more sense, IMO.

But the bigger issue is, I was not proven wrong in regard to my first impressions based on MD's stream. AI is hurting. I quit an immortal game because at t45 I got score lead and knew I couldn't lose. That's just wrong #2.

And yeah, the Shoshone are broken.

 

[Justice1337]

Yeah, after a few games now I've found that certain things aren't as big of a deal as I thought, and I've also found new things to be irate about.

But the good news, it seems like the entire game is toned down to reflect slower tech rates. Probably in line with their objective to make later eras more relevant. While breaking my back to keep pace with the old G&K timings, I'm noticing that the AI isn't quite as far. The AI also builds fewer units and is less aggressive, so all in all it feels more like Immortal than Deity. There are also notably less runaways. Russia got something like 20 cities in one of my games, but sending one of my spies over there revealed she was actually behind in tech. Flat tech reductions are hitting the AI much harder than the human most of the time, along with of course hitting ICS directly in the face. So along with being more rigid about what strategies are allowed, the game is also a touch easier than it used to be for those strategies that haven't been punished.

And so for as many cities as I've wanted to make, I've had enough money to buy Settlers with only one or two friends. Even in a game I played as Assyria, where every civ who hates warmongers was at my throat from stealing multiple CS workers and capturing a CS T40, Askia was still my friend and he was trading me all his Gold. That way I was able to finance one Settler on T35 or so. It's only when I expanded to more luxuries that I wish Askia had more Gold, and so I was torn between sending him my caravans and using them for Food.

So as far as "beating Deity" without lump sums, I can say I pulled in a T280 Domination and a T310'ish Science win. Doing it with fewer cities is balanced by the AI having less stuff, it's just frustrating for those who want to keep playing the old style of game, which was admittedly much more fast-paced in the early game. And if what you mean by ICS is 8+ cities, even "ICS" I would say is possible, if not ideal, provided you don't actually get started on the Settler spam until the dark ages AD, post Turn 100. Still, I'm going to try a few true ICS (Infinite City Spam) style openers as Maya before I label it as dead.

 

[Falconiano]

Well the good news and bad news is that it's not a complete fix.

First, this was only ever a problem on Deity, and it continues to only be a feature of Deity. Even on Immortal, AI's just never had enough for you to buy more than one Settler this way. As it is now, it's harder to get the AI's gold, but still the AI only has gold to trade on Deity, and you will get it one way or another eventually. So the problem continues to be that players migrating to Deity are served just as well by learning these gimmicks as they are developing good strategy skills and wise prioritization of resources. If that's what Firaxis wanted to avoid, they failed.

Second, you only need one or two trade partners in order to get the Gold flowing to pre-BNW levels. AI's will sign DoF's more liberally now, then you just trade for their lump sums in exchange for the GPT coming in from your non-friends. Every turn you will make a GPT for lump sum deal with your friend for whatever income he/they were able to make in the previous turn. So, more micromanagement, more unintuitive exploits, equal benefit. If Firaxis wanted to reduce the impact of Gold trading in the early game, they didn't entirely succeed.

Third, the superiority of purchasing Settlers over building them stayed in place. True, other Civ games had you hard building every Settler and in theory Civ V would work more this way with this change, but at the same time, Civ V is the first title to halt your growth in a city where you're building a Settler. And any Food above 2 continues to translate very poorly into Hammers on Settler builds. So the methods of the ploy may have been changed, but the overarching incentive to avoid hard-building Settlers is still there, and it remains at stark odds with the prod boost in the Collective Rule SP. So basically any strategy that avoids hard-building Settlers will be the new standard to replace the old. If Firaxis wanted to emphasize hard building Settlers, they failed.


Behind all of this, the benefits of expanding in the first place have been drastically changed because tech costs now increase per each city founded. In deciding between expanding and an early NC build, you only had to judge, say, the benefits of the NC in a size 6 cap, roughly 10 beakers. Little known secret apparently, you could get those same 10 beakers with 2 size 3-4 cities with Libraries. Now, adding those cities increases your tech costs. Adding puppets doesn't. So in the trifecta of staying small, expanding peacefully, and expanding through conquest, only expanding peacefully is nerfed, which is the one that needed it the least as evidenced by so much Tradtion over Liberty. Maybe this is even a deep enough cut to go against the old 4-cities trad, changing it to 2 or so cities, who knows. But at the same time, it's redundant and overlaps with the above changes such that you'll have an even harder time trying to play the old way, even if you have the Gold somehow. At a time where everyone in G&K was wondering whether ICS could be resuscitated, the xpac is here and now it's just dead on arrival, taking with it basically every kind of game other than OCC.

^ Agree 100%

I honestly feel like this was really needed, too many people say it's easy because they exploit early trading a ton but if you only have 1-2 trade partners it's not as easy - let alone if you make "no trade" games.

I personally go 2-city tradition and it works wonders, 4-cities was doable with the previous uber-trading madness but it's not anymore.
The AI actually has an advantage now.

Still, it makes little sense.
DoF'ing might be more rewarding but the penalty for DoWing a DoF is still a big trade-off.
Now if DoF friends were actually friends, i.e. dont plop cities next to your borders and dont backstab every time... I believe we're better off scouting faraway early and DoFing the farest civs.

 

[Moriarte]

Yeah, after a few games now I've found that certain things aren't as big of a deal as I thought, and I've also found new things to be irate about.

But the good news, it seems like the entire game is toned down to reflect slower tech rates. Probably in line with their objective to make later eras more relevant. While breaking my back to keep pace with the old G&K timings, I'm noticing that the AI isn't quite as far. The AI also builds fewer units and is less aggressive, so all in all it feels more like Immortal than Deity. There are also notably less runaways. Russia got something like 20 cities in one of my games, but sending one of my spies over there revealed she was actually behind in tech. Flat tech reductions are hitting the AI much harder than the human most of the time, along with of course hitting ICS directly in the face. So along with being more rigid about what strategies are allowed, the game is also a touch easier than it used to be for those strategies that haven't been punished.

And so for as many cities as I've wanted to make, I've had enough money to buy Settlers with only one or two friends. Even in a game I played as Assyria, where every civ who hates warmongers was at my throat from stealing multiple CS workers and capturing a CS T40, Askia was still my friend and he was trading me all his Gold. That way I was able to finance one Settler on T35 or so. It's only when I expanded to more luxuries that I wish Askia had more Gold, and so I was torn between sending him my caravans and using them for Food.

So as far as "beating Deity" without lump sums, I can say I pulled in a T280 Domination and a T310'ish Science win. Doing it with fewer cities is balanced by the AI having less stuff, it's just frustrating for those who want to keep playing the old style of game, which was admittedly much more fast-paced in the early game. And if what you mean by ICS is 8+ cities, even "ICS" I would say is possible, if not ideal, provided you don't actually get started on the Settler spam until the dark ages AD, post Turn 100. Still, I'm going to try a few true ICS (Infinite City Spam) style openers as Maya before I label it as dead.

I think late game ideology advantages completely outweigh early game gold shortages. Just finished my first deity domination and my tech advancement was a disgrace, when compared to G&K. 220 bpt at turn 175? No problem, mate, you're only 9 percent behind the world tech leader. In the end, when all these happiness ideologies started flowing, I completely eclipsed everyone in tech and conquered the world with artilleries + tanks + few GW bombers. @ turn 239. I didn't found a religion and I still have no idea how tourism works and why the heck it is even there.. When you conquer cities, you get them wonders filled with works of art, so no worries there.

I also noticed AI won't expand too much, yet, I haven't noticed AI being less aggressive, on the contrary, I was DoW'ed by friends left and right (which was really fortunate, as I didn't have to do that myself) But that is probably due to the nature of domination play.

I am more tempted to use liberty these days with cash being a scarcity. It seems natural to develop a Cap. until turn 35' ish and then spam 3-4 settlers, while saving cash for upgrades and occasional lux tile purchases.

 

[Deau]

But the bigger issue is, I was not proven wrong in regard to my first impressions based on MD's stream. AI is hurting. I quit an immortal game because at t45 I got score lead and knew I couldn't lose. That's just wrong #2.

And yeah, the Shoshone are broken.

As far as I am aware, they have significantly overhauled the way score is calculated. I wouldn't use that as a metric on how you are doing compared to GnK.

Shoshone even further twitch the numbers in a fake manar since they significantly increase your early game score as it's, at that point, mostly based on the number of tiles you own.

 

[tommynt]

Deity in this expension is as easy as emperor had been before. Its a joke.

Not like it was hard before, but when you just dont try to get wonders i.e. dont loose wonder races, its like going for autowin when u r semiclever

 

[The Pilgrim]

As far as I am aware, they have significantly overhauled the way score is calculated. I wouldn't use that as a metric on how you are doing compared to GnK.

Shoshone even further twitch the numbers in a fake manar since they significantly increase your early game score as it's, at that point, mostly based on the number of tiles you own.

Give me a little credit, Deau. I will never judge based on score only. But if I have 4 cities and NC done by t65, this is a game I can't lose. Score is not an indication of how I'm doing compared to G&K but only how I'm doing compared to the AI. And it shows that AI has been bypassed already, which is crazy. Add that to the fact AI doesn't expand as much as it used to and its economy is severely crippled due to lack of land gold and there is no chance I'm gonna lose that lead. Btw, first game with Portugal had similar dynamics. Although its start is much slower than Shoshone's, AI is not a contestant even though I have no clue how new systems work. Let's wait for balancing patches.

 

[Old Peter]

I have not got the game yet. But I feel very depressed that you guys write that deity is even easier now than before.

I thought the removal of trading abuse etc would make it tougher.

Can you guys think of any settings that would make the game a bit harder (except for tundra starts etc)?

 

[Catan_Settler]

If you want to make the game harder there are a few ways to do so-- increase map size (the bigger the map the tougher the competition), add AIs and remove CityStates (ie: Standard sized map 12 AI + 12 City States is a lot harder than 8 AI + 16 CS), or you could even turn resources down to sparse.

 

[GrantBud]

One fantastic thing is the rate you get for loans if you have a DoF. Basically, you get a free cash advance - 1 gpt for 30 turns will net you 30 gold from a friend. I generally prefer to keep the GPT except in emergencies though, or if I need to rush build something like universities etc.

 

[Justice1337]

I have not got the game yet. But I feel very depressed that you guys write that deity is even easier now than before.

I thought the removal of trading abuse etc would make it tougher.

Can you guys think of any settings that would make the game a bit harder (except for tundra starts etc)?

Well, I think of it like this. There were basically two ways I would lose a Deity game before. First, getting chain DoW'd on Turn 40, or otherwise overpowered with early military. Second, losing the space race to an AI who had founded 30 cities.

The difficulty is only easier in that these two conditions are more manageable. The AI will become friendly more easily and won't generally DoW you just because your military is weak. I have not noticed it backstab either or sign phony DoF's. But if you open-face DoW a CS under their protection, you can bet that they will never forgive you. So, the AI is more polarized depending on what you do.

Also, tech rates are slower for every empire except OCC, and tech costs seem to escalate more steeply. This means that you can get tech parity in the places you want much easier, and you don't just have to ship all your units overseas to deal with a runaway just because. You also don't have to take the same Rat SP's and conquer secondary Capital cities every game just to keep relevant either.


So all in all, there is more room to do different things on Diety. You can "sandbox" more. A lot of players take this to indicate an easier game. But you can look at that differently.

On the one hand, defeat on Diety was so two-dimensional before that victory was generally assured anyway if you avoided defeat. In that way, it's no easier. If you optimize on Diety, are familiar with the drivers of the VC you're pursuing, and execute, you always won before. The AI didn't beat you then, and it doesn't beat you now. It didn't develop Deep Blue like intelligence and a competitive drive to blow you out every game. It's just possible to do different things now.

And on the other hand, the actions that the AI takes make much more sense now. You can actually watch the AI pick a VC, take SP's that make sense with it, and beat you to key Wonders and Beliefs. Before it essentially wandered randomly, now it will go for its VC. So in that way, I've been surprised at the AI's behavior in late game. Before all it would do is launch. Now it conquers the right cities first and uses the World Congress very sensibly to get it into a winning position.