First foray into deity - tips?

[Mordraer]

So I have read a lot on this forum with different deity strategies and tips, but I still have a few questions. I'm in my first deity game with legendary resource start, huge map, standard pace. Any help would be great!

1. Early War - It seems any sort of early game 30+ turn war puts you too far behind with buildings/tech that it isn't even worth it? Example: In my current deity game I am fighting Shaka and I have taken all of his cities at long last (oh my lord I underestimated Impis), but I'm not sure it was a good idea. Initially I managed to buy some time by paying off another AI to war with him but it didn't keep him busy for long and he turned his warmongering back on me, so I had no choice except war, but I didn't necessarily have to wipe him out entirely. I'm sitting on turn 176 with 11 cities, including Shaka's very juicy capital (legendary resource start, so he had 4 copper and a marble), but now that the war has concluded (and he only has one city now, muahaha), I'm very behind on science. I'm not sure the game is winnable from this point. Catherine has a 15 tech lead on me, and it is 1160 AD. Think I can go mass science from here with 11 cities and churn it out to a science win?

*Save file attached, plus two screenshots of my current situation below:

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

........1a. Viewing my save file, are my city placement choices solid? There weren't a lot of luxeries nearby so I had to take one of my early expansions very close to the Zulus. (Shocker, he eventually ran at me with spears and an angry face)

........1b. Um, so now that I've killed Shaka..what do I do with my very large, quickly-becoming-technologically-useless army?

2. Religion - It seems attempting to spread a religion is futile at deity level, because there is always at least one AI mass-spreading at a rate far greater than my own. That said, is it best to just go Cathedral/Pagoda etc and just use religion locally instead of trying to spread it?

3. What to do with Moses - Second great prophet - is he best used to Enhance religion or spread? I'm leaning towards the former.

4. Tourism - Okay to ignore tourism if I'm going to go with the popular ideology and I'm vying for a science victory? I generally pop Great Artists for a Golden Age and really put zero effort into accruing tourism at all. Is this completely naive?

5. Playstyle - I love going Wide. This seems remarkably harder to accomplish in Civ 5 BNW. Any basic tips on how to manage this? Specifically happiness seems to be such a burden when going Wide. Note I am currently using Shoshone. Maybe they aren't a great Civ for going Wide?

6. Social Policies - I love opening Liberty tree, but I'm always a bit thrown off for what to go for next when I have to wait until I can get Rationalism. I've just been tossing a couple of policies at Tradition until Rationalism opens up. Thoughts on this?

7. Any other general tips that a newish player like me may just not even think of? Note I am always selling excess horse, iron, and luxuries, I'm stealing 2 workers to start the game, I pay other AI when I see an army coming, and I go 4 cities to a quick National College before building more cities.

I come from playing RTS games so I have always been a student of the game for as much time as I spend actually playing it. I've been very highly ranked in every RTS I've played, dating all the way back to being ranked top 10 on Case's Ladder in Warcraft II on Kali to more currently being a 1v1 Master-level Random player in Starcraft II. That said, I'm always very interested in making sure I'm playing efficiently and making smart choices. As I'm sure all of you know, Civ 5 is relatively unforgiving with regard to some key moments that a player like me who has only a few games under his belt isn't even really aware of. I guess that's the purpose of this post is to mitigate my "throw-away games" in search of that first deity win. I'm currently recovering from surgery due to a beach volleyball injury so I have a lot of time on my hands. I'd love to win at least one deity game before my life becomes super busy again and I'm working full-time and spending 20 hours a week playing volleyball. Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[danaphanous]

It's funny that you are playing wide, huge, and shoshone. I just completed a video series documenting my own game doing exactly that!

Shoshone are very powerful used for wide empires and no, I wouldn't say victory is out of the question for you, though the only option you have is science at this point. If the Deity AI are like mine, the bigger empires will be entering the information era around Turn 250-65, it'll vary a bit based on if they are culturally or scientifically focused. Mine passed arts funding and were cultural so they entered a bit later though they still did great on tech. You want to be caught up and take hubble telescope before they do. Your science is really low, you need to improve that ASAP or you'll have no chance at all. The best way to do this is run as many trade routes to the tech leaders as possible. Improve your economy and run as many research agreements as possible. Run every scientist specialist in the empire as you become available, especially if you are unhappy and not growing. You want to save a bunch of them for the end. Beeline Plastics to get those labs up, etc. If you go order to stay happy pick up factories quickly as well. Once you get a couple techs from apollo program use free techs and a couple scientists to launch you through satellites and try your hardest to get hubble before the AI. If you don't the AI that gets hubble will be a big contender for the space victory. You have a big empire you just need to start using it to build up your science.

Huge worlds the advice is a bit different. For instance, stuff like religion, culture victories, domination, ideological pressure, etc. is all harder.

Let me explain:

There are nearly twice the normal number of AI here. In my games about 1/3 of AI pick piety and go for a religion so you are talking probably a minimum of 3-4 aggressively religious civs. They will take the best beliefs far before you can unless you are a natural religious civ like Celts or Ethiopia. Mayans have a bit of an advantage too but I find them to still struggle against the Deity/Huge combo. You are best off forgetting about religion, though I did manage to get a somewhat useful one with Shoshone purely due to luck (1 faith ruin for pantheon, Faith pantheon, and 2 prophet ruins!). AND...I was still the last religion out of 7 with limited choices even with that. 5 religions had already enhanced too by turn 50 on my game. If you even get ONE religious building I'd say you got lucky. There were none available on my game at all, the AI take them first. If you get lucky enough to get a religion focus on things that will be left that are helpful for a wide empire: happiness from temples, happiness from gardens, happiness from shrines, religious community, feed the world, etc. Anything to get extra happiness or that help with development will help going wide. Basically developmental ones that the AI don't like as much but that are actually pretty solid. When they inevitably get aggressive and spread their religions to you use the opportunity to buy their faith buildings on the border, but try to preserve your religion in the core if you get something like religious community of feed the world.

Actually using your great people to make works is not a bad idea. On a huge world the likelihood that all 3 ideologies exist and are pressuring you is a bit higher, especially if there are multiple influential AI which is likely on a huge world. This means even picking the popular ideology you are likely to have some pressure on you, I did and I decided after the experience that building up your own early tourism is a superior and safer strategy for huge then saving writers for the world's fair and using artists for golden ages. It'll get you some early defense and is the only way you'll get some exotic-level protection by ideologies.

commerce is the best tree while you wait on rationalism after liberty. You want to get to the 25% purchase reduction costs, its amazing with a big empire + order. I was getting 65% off purchased buildings by the end which significantly accelerated my spaceship.

wars are fine, but not ones that drag out--they set you behind as you saw in this game. If you are locked in a conflict and the other party won't back down you need to bring in pressure from outside. Generally it is more effective to settle your own cities then conquer others, but Shaka would've continued to attack you probably since you were a neighbor and can't help but have the weakest-looking army on Deity/huge. It's not really possible to have as many troops as the AI do...you can't make enough money to support them. I probably would've back-settled more, taken only a few Zulu cities, and payed an ally to help me split the empire up and bring down Zulu quicker. Every war is different though, so hard to say if it could've gone better then it did for you.

when you do the national college matters a lot less then you think on a huge/wide game. I didn't build mine till well into the 100's on turns and I still killed the AI on science. On a wide game you are nerfing your capital population for a while to pump out the many settlers. The science from early trade routes will be more significant, so make sure you run those as soon as possible, not NC. I prefer to settle more then 4 cities before building the NC unless it can be done very quickly. Otherwise you lose a lot of turns for the new cities to grow, build, and develop and you lose nice border spots to the AI. You might consider filling out the edges and border spots of your empire, then building NC, then backfilling if you really can't stand how expensive the NC becomes. I didn't build it till after 10 cities though and I was fine. Like I said the capital pop stays lower for a lot longer and NC isn't very powerful till your capital becomes big or gets its first academy (liberty finisher).

Under ideological pressure like I was struggling with, or in the lack of a good source of extra happiness from religion, I would say try to settle 10 cities and grow them all effectively. This creates a pretty good order empire for winning the space race and gives you more potential to generate tourism and culture.

Not much else I can say except you picked a hard combination to start playing Deity on. Huge worlds are much trickier and less predictable. Also, giving yourself a legendary start is basically like dropping the game a level in my opinion though maybe less so on a huge world. If you want to get used to Deity try normal starts on standard/pangaea sized worlds. They are the easiest in my opinion.

 

[Mordraer]

Actually using your great people to make works is not a bad idea. On a huge world the likelihood that all 3 ideologies exist and are pressuring you is a bit higher, especially if there are multiple influential AI which is likely on a huge world. This means even picking the popular ideology you are likely to have some pressure on you, I did and I decided after the experience that building up your own early tourism is a superior and safer strategy for huge then saving writers for the world's fair and using artists for golden ages. It'll get you some early defense and is the only way you'll get some exotic-level protection by ideologies.

Great advice here - good to know this. Thanks!

commerce is the best tree while you wait on rationalism after liberty. You want to get to the 25% purchase reduction costs, its amazing with a big empire + order. I was getting 65% off purchased buildings by the end which significantly accelerated my spaceship.

Yeah I figured there was a better route. I'll go Commerce in the future for sure.

when you do the national college matters a lot less then you think on a huge/wide game. I didn't build mine till well into the 100's on turns and I still killed the AI on science. On a wide game you are nerfing your capital population for a while to pump out the many settlers. The science from early trade routes will be more significant, so make sure you run those as soon as possible, not NC. I prefer to settle more then 4 cities before building the NC unless it can be done very quickly. Otherwise you lose a lot of turns for the new cities to grow, build, and develop and you lose nice border spots to the AI. You might consider filling out the edges and border spots of your empire, then building NC, then backfilling if you really can't stand how expensive the NC becomes. I didn't build it till after 10 cities though and I was fine. Like I said the capital pop stays lower for a lot longer and NC isn't very powerful till your capital becomes big or gets its first academy (liberty finisher).

Ah, that makes sense. So NC is more of a Tall strat-centric push than a Wide one. I'll keep that in mind as well.

Also, giving yourself a legendary start is basically like dropping the game a level in my opinion though maybe less so on a huge world. If you want to get used to Deity try normal starts on standard/pangaea sized worlds. They are the easiest in my opinion.

Why is legendary start any different? The AI all get the same thing, so essentially I just did it to get the game moving faster. Is that not the case? I figured since everyone starts with the same "legendary" spot then it wouldn't change anything in difficulty. Also on my next deity try I will certainly not go for Huge. I figured with going Wide it would be advantageous and overall more fun. I always hate running out of space to expand.

Thanks for all of your advice. Much appreciated! I will take all of your points into account and I'll definitely watch your video as well.

 

[BigChiefLizzy]

Why is legendary start any different? The AI all get the same thing, so essentially I just did it to get the game moving faster. Is that not the case? I figured since everyone starts with the same "legendary" spot then it wouldn't change anything in difficulty. Also on my next deity try I will certainly not go for Huge. I figured with going Wide it would be advantageous and overall more fun. I always hate running out of space to expand.

I think this is because the AI is poor at using it's workers efficiently so it won't improve the extra resource tiles as quickly as a human player so doesn't gain as much benefit from them?

 

[danaphanous]

The quality of your start can mean the difference between an overpowered snowball that means a turn 210-220 science victory and a turn 260 science victory (well-played average start) on standard speeds and world sizes. This is omitting tricky and luck-based strategies/factors that speed players will use to get the best times. The Deity AI aren't as good at managing their empires and start with more already so the legendary start makes less of a difference for them.

I was thinking about smaller empires and tradition though with that example. In a huge empire strategy the quality of your capital location matters a bit less, but it still matters a lot because legendary starts have:

A) faster growth and
B) cheaper settlers

It will still mean turns of difference off your victory time. If you start near 4 copper hills of course your settlers will be several turns cheaper which has big effects on how quickly you can expand. If you start near multiple 3-food tiles and 2-food1-hammer tiles your early growth and build order is greatly accelerated as well. Then when you finally get workers your tiles get better a lot quicker too. You will be on the growth fast-track for a lot longer for instance if you have several good food tiles buffable by a granary. This is why many players say a strong start is like dropping a level in difficulty.

The advantage of practicing with normal starts is you get used to being able to win without this kind of accelerated snowballing help from a very good start. That's my opinion though. If you like legendary starts then by all means you can keep playing it. I won't deny it's fun. But if you ever get to the point it starts to feel easy, you'll want to turn it off to fully experience Deity as a difficulty level because it definitely makes games easier to always have great starting terrain. Now there are plenty of players that only play with legendary or reroll till they get something they like, or even do both, so it's not as if you have to do as I say. Single-player is about you having fun. I'm at the point that strong starts make Deity too easy for me so I recommend if players are looking to improve, playing out something that doesn't have great terrain. You'll learn to be better at micromanagement and empire planning after a few games of it.

 

[Mordraer]

Thanks for all the responses. As an update, Russia ended up crushing me in a science victory by at least 40 turns. It seems the extended war with Zulu cost me dearly. Also I'm still having a hard time figuring out how to account for massive happiness fluctuations with regard to ideologies. One thing I'm not doing is using archaeologists - is this something I should be doing as well? In summation, deity is tough.

 

[Sclb]

First advice, don't play on huge if you're just beginning on deity, as huge is more difficult in my opinion and also few others.

1. early war is only beneficial if you can guarantee a peace treaty that has benefit, such as being able to sell your lux and embassy. That combined with worker steals and caravan pillage makes war attractive. However you mentioned having Shaka and war with him is never a benefit since he doesn't make peace easily and he beelines impis which are difficult. War with Shaka won't benefit you unless you can capture his cities or eliminate him but that should usually only be done in a domination game and I don't recommend domination on huge. Taking out any civ in a peaceful game will only get you into trouble as you lose friends and trading.

2. On huge, don't bother with a good religion, you won't get good beliefs unless you want to settle for religious community or swords into plowshare.

3. Always enhance with 2nd prophet for more belief, or plant it if you don't want to enhance. Spreading it is a waste and you can spread with missionary if you really wanted. Even better, if you can get Borobodur, the 3 missionary are free.

4. Ignore tourism. Don't make any great works if you are not going for culture. The amount of tourism you make prior to archaeology is negligible compared to the amount of culture deity AI can generate, especially on huge. That means all great artists are for golden ages, and all great writers for culture. Ideally you want to pop golden ages for world's fair and use all your great writers 8 turns after winning world's fair. If you do this, you shouldn't have any issue for ideology pressure. If you arent going for culture victory, don't bother with archaeologists as you likely don't have much hammer for them and they are off the optimal tech path.

5. Wide is good for Shoshone, however you should probably learn how to play tall first as it's easier to manage.

6. Same as above, you should learn tradition before trying liberty as it is harder style to play and prone to massive happiness hits.

 

[Mordraer]

So danaphanous, I've been watching your video. I'm on the 5th one so far. Would you mind explaining a bit as to your logic of stagnating your early growth until your religion has spread? I'm not really very familiar with the passive religion spreading mechanics and how to maximize it as you build your empire out. Great video so far by the way, I'm learning a lot

 

[danaphanous]

Sure, and I actually didn't do it optimally here, but I'll explain the best way to do this.

The idea is, in a wide liberty game you want to get the passive religion spreading through your empire early as you are settling, this means you won't have to waste any faith on missionaries and it'll snowball through your empire and on to neighbors. Without the effects of beliefs coming into play, every city of your religion exerts 6 influence on all others within 10 hexes. New cities convert to your religion when more then 50% of the citizens follow it. So you can double the rate it spreads through your empire simply by getting one other 1 population city to convert. When I mentioned stagnating my growth, I don't mean do it for every city. You still want the majority of your cities growing early so they get better production and can produce archers and things for defense. Since I am planting many cities slowing one city is ok and once it converts the religion quickly spreads through my empire. I didn't start slowing my 2nd city till population 3 though because I forgot so it took a bit longer, it's better to do it at 1 population since it's easy to get a majority that way. Pressure will triple after the 3rd city and new cities in range of 3 others of your religion usually convert before they can grow anyway so at that point you can stop worrying about it. It makes spreading your religion pretty effortless and as long as you think about and do it early, the effect on growth and cities is small since you probably were going to hit a bit of unhappiness from rapidly settling and a slow in growth right after settling 8-10 cities anyway.

Another way to spread religion is using trade routes from your holy city to others. If you do this it'll also exert religious pressure on cities that aren't your religion. This can be helpful to convert cities that are slow to convert.

 

[poxpower]

What's pressure worth? I always wonder.
How fast does 6 pressure convert 1 citizen?
How does competing pressure work? So I have 30 to a city and another religion has 24. If the city has 10 followers and 10 nonreligion, what happens?

Does it exert 30 pressure from my religion, per turn on one of the non-converted, or does it take my pressure minus the AI pressure and apply that to the non-converts?

 

[danaphanous]

it takes 100 pressure summed every turn to convert 1 citizen. With multiple religions they each sum and convert citizens until all the nonreligious citizens are converted, not sure if the total stays the same but I'd assume so.

So this is why with only a holy city it takes 100/6 = 17 turns to convert another city. This is slower then the slowest growth rate of 15 turns which is why you want to slow one of your cities a little so it converts and this number is halved for other nearby cities. This should be enough for passive religion to overtake your empire as you settle. Make sense?

 

[choraltrickster]

it takes 100 pressure summed every turn to convert 1 citizen. With multiple religions they each sum and convert citizens until all the nonreligious citizens are converted, not sure if the total stays the same but I'd assume so.

So this is why with only a holy city it takes 100/6 = 17 turns to convert another city. This is slower then the slowest growth rate of 15 turns which is why you want to slow one of your cities a little so it converts and this number is halved for other nearby cities. This should be enough for passive religion to overtake your empire as you settle. Make sense?

Great reply. Thanks for this info!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[poxpower]

it takes 100 pressure summed every turn to convert 1 citizen. With multiple religions they each sum and convert citizens until all the nonreligious citizens are converted, not sure if the total stays the same but I'd assume so.

Wait to it totals for each different religion or totals for all pressure and then converts a guy based on the religion that has the most?

What about converting already converted citizens?

Also when cities grow, the new citizen is a follower right? Though it doesn't seem to really work that way so much as I've noticed often my capital will have like 30 pop and 20 followers of my religion even with super early religion / grand temple in there.

Anyway I guess none of this really matters so much in the end beyond just converting small cities fast.

 

[danaphanous]

each competing religion totals separately so you can get new citizens becoming a minor religion even as the dominant one grows. Holy cities exert extra pressure on themselves so that's why they convert faster. Also conversion may slow down in big cities with multiple competing religions, I have also noticed that unreligious citizens can persist for a while. I know the 100 pressure = 1 citizen is right for small cities just starting to be affected.

I think as new citizens grow the new citizen is unreligious unless you have accumulated pressure enough to instantly convert the new citizen unless this would bring the city under 50% of the religion, in which case it instantly gains the majority religion. This is based on my observation that I've also never seen a city lose religion through growth so I assume the city keeps enough converted to at least equal 50%. However, I've watched and I know it isn't always the religion upon growth so I think if you already have over 50% it waits and uses the pressure rules. I don't know the exact math. In general though if you keep the pressure from your religion higher then any other religion and it becomes your religion first, it will never lose that status without help from missionaries or prophets.

Also once a citizen becomes a religion it can't be changed by passive pressure. I think minority religious influence gets into the city by the new unreligious citizens (from growth) slowly getting converted, but the original converts will never be switched by passive pressure and it's why you want to get your religion spreading very early.

Hopefully someone who mods religion or has seen the code can add more information here?

 

[Mordraer]

Watched your entire video series. I scrubbed through the last 10 videos kind of quickly though, as I really just needed to learn your early and mid game tactics and how you handled ideological pressure. After that you were pretty much on auto-pilot cruising to victory. Well played game. Especially considering you made it harder than it needed to be with your city sprawling. Thanks for all the tips!

 

[danaphanous]

no problem, Glad you enjoyed it! It was certainly one of the most eventful games I've played recently.

 

[Mordraer]

So would you say the best way to make sure your religion efficiently spreads through pressure would be to halt growth at city size 3 as you're expanding? Or would you even say size 1?

 

[danaphanous]

Size 1 conversion is faster, but the trade-off is that city is slower developing. Because you are founding your religion late, maybe after you've already settled 3-4 cities I say lock city 3 or 4 at 1 pop till it converts. It can be significantly slower otherwise. pop-3 conversion works too but it'll take twice as long to start building steam. It works too though if you aren't feeling threatened by neighboring religions like in Shoshone empires.

 

[Mordraer]

Mayans and Dido are pressuring my borders with x3 than my own pressure. I'm assuming the only way to effectively combat this over time is keep building missionaries? I'm not sure what else to do, as by the time my cities finally converted they were already taking on more than double pressure from neighboring religions almost within three turns. I hate piety deity AI who just spread religion. It is an irritating game mechanic.

 

[apocalypse105]

Do you guys lower the city states on huge maps? Because on standard maps they allways are in the way and you cant settle more then 4 cities because all city states are clusterd together is this in huge diferent?

Still thinx 24 city states is to much.. you cant keep an eye on all of them.