General tips for playing on higher difficulties?

[Tehloltractor]

I'm up to almost 170 hours on this game and I don't feel like I've improved much while I've been playing. I can play on Prince and comfortably on Warlord difficulty.
I've only ever won one or two games and I'd really like to be able to play on higher difficulties. Does anyone have any general tips for playing, or any simple strategies etc that might help me improve?

 

[Mozzington]

Forget about wonder spam.

 

[Scarpa]

I'm up to almost 170 hours on this game and I don't feel like I've improved much while I've been playing. I can play on Prince and comfortably on Warlord difficulty.
I've only ever won one or two games and I'd really like to be able to play on higher difficulties. Does anyone have any general tips for playing, or any simple strategies etc that might help me improve?

Prince to King is a good jump and in my personal experience the first time I had to actually pay attention to game mechanics.

I would start a King game and focus solely on growth. Go Tradition to make it 'easy' and try to get 4 solid cities up. On King if you get the growth aspect right you can easily outpace the AI on tech and have a fairly easy time of it.

Other things off the top of my head are start paying attention to diplomacy if you aren't already. What I mean by that is have an awareness of who like who, who hates who, etc. Also trade everything you're not actively using away as much as possible for extra cash.

Those are the main things in my opinion, I'm an Emperor player mostly. I can win Immortal but prefer an easier more builder oriented game. I've never even tried Deity, FWIW.

 

[vivalamexico]

Yeah, like Scarpa said, go for easy 4-city tradition-tall--preferably for SV or maybe diplo for the easy wins

 

[budweiser]

Welcome!

Make sure you have enough workers for your cities, 1 or 2 workers for each city and make sure you have 6 to 10 up graded military units so you don't get attacked or if you do, you can defend it.

 

[mrwho]

If I could tell you just one thing, it'd be this:
Science is king.
Science is just so, so important in this game, and is the key to pretty much everything. Prioritise science buildings and science techs, and make your cities grow as much as possible. The National College is an extremely powerful building, and if you get that as soon as you can, you'll be able to get leave the AI in the dust.

Other general tips:
Don't grab wonders just for the hell of it. Good infrastructure is more important than random wonders.
Ignore score. It can be disheartening to not be top of the leaderboard, but score doesn't really matter. On higher difficulties, you will rarely be at the top.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

For King and earlier I would say you can wonder-spam, main thing is to go with pure Tradition, and get a worker going in the first 30 turns. If you do that, and beeline to CS/Education ... I don't know, it seems like it should be hard to lose.

 

[DarthSheldonPhD]

Ix-nay on the underways

pikes and Cbows, man...

National college

 

[Seabastian Civ]

Military is important.

Go tall like everyone said, but you don't need to be an angel. In fact, you should become proficient at knocking a civ out of the game early. An early army of 6-7 archers and 1-2 spears/horsemen should be able to decimate a neighbor and take his capital. Provided of course, that you start your march as soon as you upgrade to comp. bows. Try not to lose any units... use the terrain.

An early military win will do wonders for your confidence and for your chances for a victory.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

The biggest help I found was paying attention to relationships with other AIs. Regardless of whether you are going peaceful/tall or wide, knowing who to get in good with, and against who, is everything.

 

[Resipsa]

Build walls early, usually after library if pre-NC or prior to Library if founding after your NC. That's the sole thing that I had problems with when transitioning from Immortal to Deity.

 

[neilkaz]

Build walls early, usually after library if pre-NC or prior to Library if founding after your NC. That's the sole thing that I had problems with when transitioning from Immortal to Deity.

Do your walls make the AI's less likely to attack you early?

 

[Seabastian Civ]

Do your walls make the AI's less likely to attack you early?

I also found that advice unique. I was raised in the spend-your-hammers-on-archers-not-walls school of thought.

 

[Manpanzee]

Spend like an hour or two watching a video LP from a knowledgeable player. I recommend MadDjinn's stuff -- he's entertaining and pretty good at explaining why he does things.

Just seeing how people think about things and how they handle city management will serve you 1,000 times better than any recommendations about grand strategy or build orders. Once you understand basic tile and city management you're in great shape. Broad strategy is really way less important than just managing your cities competently.

 

[lithium97]

my suggestion is manipulate the maps to maximize the strengths of the civ. England or ottomans on island, Iroquois in the amazon map, etc. that'll also give you some confidence.

 

[Resipsa]

I also found that advice unique. I was raised in the spend-your-hammers-on-archers-not-walls school of thought.

archers are good and you should definitely garrison an archer and move your others to the frontlines but if you get dowed the extra 2 archers you might gave wont be able to do damage multiple times per turn to all of the melee units that hit your city. Try it in your next deity game save up 400 gold and foward settle your fourth city then when you get dowed save your game and buy 2 archers and defend then reroll your save and buy walls instead. I think you'll find that 6 archers plus a wall on your front line city is superior to 8 archers for defense.

 

[Calouste]

Spend like an hour or two watching a video LP from a knowledgeable player. I recommend MadDjinn's stuff -- he's entertaining and pretty good at explaining why he does things.

Just seeing how people think about things and how they handle city management will serve you 1,000 times better than any recommendations about grand strategy or build orders. Once you understand basic tile and city management you're in great shape. Broad strategy is really way less important than just managing your cities competently.

Yep, play the board, build a solid empire and you can decide on how to win later. Don't look too far ahead, think about what it most beneficial to your empire now, how you can enhance its strengths and shore up its weaknesses. Science is not the be all and end all, you get loads of discounts and bonuses on science if you are behind, so as long as you have a good empire, you won't be more than a few techs behind, and you'll catch up later.

 

[Teproc]

I disagree with the Walls building thing. If you have good reason to think an AI will attack a city in full force and think you will need Walls, either go ahead and build them, or more likely don't spend money so that you're able to rush buy them in case the AI attacks, while building units of your own so that Walls won't be necessary and you can free up your money to do something else.

As far as LPs go, MadDjinn is good but the one I'd recommend for warmongering is ElceePlaysCiv (Light Cleric on these forums). His recent Germany Honor LP is pretty awesome for learning about tactics, how to use terrain etc. (I'm sure other *cough*tommynt*cough* do it better but entertainment value counts too) and has helped me a lot in getting my first Deity Domination win recently.

The biggest difference between Immortal to Deity, in my eyes, is the need to constantly bribe the AI to wage wars on each other. Well, not necessarily constantly, but at least once earlier so that it will hopefully snowball in these civs fighting the whole game and one of them being hated by everyone, hopefully your warmonger neighbor. It is especially crucial in a peaceful game actually, and is the only way to survive with minimal army.

 

[Teproc]

I just realised this isn't specifically about Deity, just higher difficulties. In which case the most important thing is to learn how to manage your empire, micromanageyour tile assignments and set short term goals for yourself like geting the National College up and running, reaching a key tech like Education or Machinery etc.

 

[Resipsa]

Don't build walls near your front then on Deity and see how much you get wiped. If you have the gold great you can delay and rush buy but in most cases I've used my gold to rush buy a library in my fourth to avoid delaying NC.

A wall at your front is a better investment than 2 more archers; 1) It doesn't cut into your gpt, 2) It cant easily be killed by multiple attacks in a single turn, 2) It avoids positional problems meaning that you can more easily protect 6 archers with terrain and the city itself rather than 8 archers trying to get into position. 3) It deals more damage to melee attackers during a siege than 2 additional archers would. The only drawback to having an early wall for defense as opposed to 2 additional archers is that it can't in and of itself be used for a counter attack.