[Guide] Mauling Deity

[The Pilgrim]

the problem isn't definitely within the guide nor me

It is definitely with you two and nothing but you two. Suggesting people here have some personal agenda is just silly.

 

[BBMorti]

Disabling all VC's but domination makes it, almost, impossible to lose. The way the AI controls units in war is one of it's biggest weaknesses.

There is a reason why Deity players, normally, stress about science.
With this setting I would not care much about GL, since there is no rush anyways.

I don't have much doubt this OP wins on diety, since im my mind the setting is almost impossible to lose if you do not get Tripple or Quad Dow'd early and overwhelmed.

 

[Syailendra]

Disabling all VC's but domination makes it, almost, impossible to lose. The way the AI controls units in war is one of it's biggest weaknesses.

There is a reason why Deity players, normally, stress about science.
With this setting I would not care much about GL, since there is no rush anyways.

I don't have much doubt this OP wins on diety, since im my mind the setting is almost impossible to lose if you do not get Tripple or Quad Dow'd early and overwhelmed.

basicly this.
As a constant deity loser (immortal player here), I don't even care if 2 or 3 deity ai DOW me, they just sucks at warring, having 3 to 4 ranged units per front will surely fends off any attackers. BUT... I was constantly lost to an ai going SV.
I even have a game where i took hiawathas capital, destroying his more advanced army, only to see that the spaceship is magically transported to another city... And lost.

 

[Buccaneer]

Do you understand why people think it's misleading to offer a Deity guide without admitting that you've disabled all but one of the VCs?

as well as a "Deity" guide that's really playing on Emperor.

 

[Light Cleric]

I will say out that while most of the guide is written for a much easier version of Deity, there are a few good things to gleam from it(albeit with a grain of salt):

-Forts are actually pretty good improvements but I wouldn't build them on a river like that, takes up a good tile for a Farm.
-If you're being SWARMED by a lot of melee units, it's often better to attack the ranged units first. The first ring of melee units will attack and then either fortify to heal or attack again for less damage and then fortify. If there's a lot of melee and you kill some, fresh one will just take their places. However, if you're being attacked by like 2-3 melee units and a ton of bows/siege, killing melee first is definitely advisable.
-Pyramids isn't a bad wonder and is obtainable on standard Deity but is a bit of a risk, you have to really consider if it's worthwhile. The Oracle is VERY obtainable; the AI puts like zero priority on this. The exception is if you see the Maya; 99% of the time they build the Oracle by like turn 55 or something dumb because they hit it on their way to Theology.
-Getting Triplanes is a good idea, once you kill their Great War Bombers with your interceptors you can push in and take out their cities and/or their oil sources.

- don't accept war invites, it will drag you into being hated for no reward, plus sometimes it's a trick to send you in war while your buddy takes your cities

This usually is true, a lot of times if you accept this the other guy makes after 10 turns of doing nothing and you're stuck in a long war. However if you were considering attacking him anyway then it's not a bad idea.

 

[IAmOzymandias]

I agree with brainfixer, whenever somebody takes time out of their day to write up a how-to for other people to look over, he shouldn't be yelled at for it.

That said, there is some very convoluted information in this guide. Some tweaking is certainly in order. I learned to never even try for the GL at Emperor mode because of how frequently another civ (esp. babylon/china) nab it within the first 20 turns, and i'm still twiddling my thumbs 3 turns in.

unless you have an entire city's worth of forest to chop, I'd say leave it.

I also don't really get why the guide tells you to re-roll, and then later tells you to never reload saves so you can learn from your mistakes. . . How can you learn if you give yourself an advantage from the start every time?

Thank you for taking the time to write this, but I think some tweaking, or footnotes might be in order.

 

[BrokTheFanatic]

I agree with brainfixer, whenever somebody takes time out of their day to write up a how-to for other people to look over, he shouldn't be yelled at for it.

That said, there is some very convoluted information in this guide. Some tweaking is certainly in order. I learned to never even try for the GL at Emperor mode because of how frequently another civ (esp. babylon/china) nab it within the first 20 turns, and i'm still twiddling my thumbs 3 turns in.

unless you have an entire city's worth of forest to chop, I'd say leave it.

I also don't really get why the guide tells you to re-roll, and then later tells you to never reload saves so you can learn from your mistakes. . . How can you learn if you give yourself an advantage from the start every time?

Thank you for taking the time to write this, but I think some tweaking, or footnotes might be in order.

I agree but the OP started off poorly. Look at the title "Mauling Diety". That suggests a strategy that does well with many different Diety games... but then in the fine print we have all the conditions (especially, domination victory condition only, which to me pops up page 3?).

I like to play on varied settings and try various ways to see what settings are fun for me. For example, I don't mind turning off SV to see how long I can go with tough starts (always shocking to lose to a AI cultural victory, heh), etc. But I'd never come here and say "here's how to crush at deity" because my latest fun strat testing had some good wins on Epic pace, Maya going with a semi-wide/tall variant.

Granted some players are fairly fixated on 'how to play' but we do need to be aware of certain assumptions when coming to a forum with a guide. If you are breaking those assumptions, what you are doing differently needs to be very clearly stated in both the title of the thread and your guide.

To end on a high note, yeah, no need to be harsh. And BNW can't release soon enough

 

[mercury529]

That means, one turn before growth, manually locking citizens on tiles and setting production focus to get the hammers from the tile worked by the new citizen, right?
But then, after you city has grown, can't you just revert to whatever governor you were using? Don't tell me that at Deity you micromanage constantly all the tiles in all your cities even during the late-game. From the LPs I have watched it doesn't seem so.

Sorry if I interfere, I am a King player so I have nothing to do with this thread, but I'm still struggling to understand this and other "advanced" techniques.

I actually take things one step further in the early game. I generally will look at a city 1-2 turns before growth (especially when I have only a capital city). If I can grow the city in the same number of turns but grab a few extra hammers/gold by switching to a lower food-higher production/gold tile, I generally will (if I am at war or I know there are barbs nearby who might interfere with the tile allocation, I may avoid that).

I wouldn't necessarily advise this for later in the game (the returns diminish later, so many/most people do not feel it is worth the extra time), but in the early game it can be a difference maker.

Thanks for your constructive post, I'll gladly answer all your points.

1) GL is a good chance to get a major advantage, with a guaranteed money return the few times it goes wrong.
As a gamble it's definitely all in the player's favor, therefore I'd feel bad for not even trying.
If one is very concerned with not wanting to fail wonders (which is quite strange, because if wonders were a 100% thing it would kind of defeat the whole point of Wonder Racing, no?) one can always roll Egypt.

2) I personally feel manual governor is not necessary, stopped doing it long ago.
The difference in the big scheme of things is so minimal compared to the the time investment and calculation you need to do.
Furthermore, this is a guide to non-deity players so they might not be good at manual-governor, and the default settings might actually do better than such a player could do.
When you take into consideration player mistakes (i.e. city grown but player focused on war and skips a couple turns of manual governoring the new tile), bad decisions on tile choice and allocation of mental focus, it's probably detrimental in the long run for most people.

3) I deleted that point entirely because I've grown bored of reading "omg auto workers".
As a matter of fact, once your first manual worker is done creating the necessary manual upgrades (lux, mines), if you make auto-workers they are just going to build farms/roads which you don't really need to do manually anyways.
Look at the upgrades on my screenshots, does any improvement seem wrong to you?
Beside Lux and Mines, everything else on that pic is automatic worker job.
This whole anti-autoworker stuff seems more like a recurring gag to me (which had a point a few patches ago), but as you can see they work fine once your manual settled the important stuff.

To answer your closing comment, the reason this strategy works is mainly heavy employement of defensive military tricks coupled with quick city booming and freeteching.
For domination games that is an extremely efficient way to play as you can beat armies tenfold your size while also keeping the tech gaps closed with the AI.

I do agree that if you are able to land the Great Library, it is a tremendous boon. But on Standard speed at least, in my experience it is not a worthwhile gambit. Perhaps that is different on Marathon, though I still wonder how damaging that failure to land it is. 1 hammer is worth far more than 1 gold in the early game, so failure gold is a pittance. In the meantime, you also lose turns building a library which further delays your build order and also costs you science. The settings under which you play may not make that a tremendous setback if you fail. But I would tell you from my own personal experience, that is not the case on standard settings. But perhaps I am merely less talented than you are in other aspects of the game.

As for the city governor/automated worker, I would reiterate what I said before. If the AI makes better decisions about which tiles you should be working/improving than you do as a player, Deity is not the right game setting to be playing at. Having a fundamental understanding of the relationship between food/hammers/commerce as it relates to science/units/gold is such a critical part of effective play that I feel jumping up in level is a mistake if you do not have an elementary grasp of it.

That isn't to say you need to have a complete understanding. Frankly, I think the best players are the ones who have a more nuanced understanding of those relationships, particularly with regard to expansion and war. But by its very nature, the AI is made competitive with human players not by enhancing its decision-making capabilities, but by giving other bonuses. If a player does not make better decisions than the AI, then playing against an AI that receives bonuses as well strikes me as an unwise decision.

 

[Vohbo]

Unless the AI's have other priorities (all of them), the Great Library goes around turn 35. If you immediately go for Writing, you'll unlock it by turn 16. That means that you need an average of 9 production starting the turn you unlock it, to have any chance of building it. This at a moment where you don't even have workers yet, as city states don't have them this early to steal.
That makes the scenario extremely unrealistic mathematically, as Maddjinn has shown in several of his Beyond the Monuments.

It still sometimes happens, but I think I have gotten it maybe 1 in 5 times I attempt it (that is when the map is already very suited for it), and it's mathematically impossible to increase my production output. It has nothing to do with playing skill, only with the luck that AI's don't build it immediately.

 

[mimiianian]

Thanks for the guide. It seems a lot of people do not agree with your strategies, but nevertheless I think you offer some valuable tips and I appreciate the effort you put into your guide.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Does anybody know whether, with certain victory conditions turned off, the AI de-prioritizes certain wonders? Maybe his turning off all VCs but domination accounts for why he is able to get the GL with the frequency he reports: the AI no longer goes after a "non-military" wonder as aggressively.

 

[tommynt]

defintly not, guess ai d even build spaceship parts if they were available but spaceship not able to launch.
Its dumb, it doesnt adjust to anything ..

really there are so many myth about ai acting because, x,y,z - its mainly just coincidence. Its patterns are very straightforward and allways "like the same"

 

[Iberian]

defintly not, guess ai d even build spaceship parts if they were available but spaceship not able to launch.
Its dumb, it doesnt adjust to anything ..

really there are so many myth about ai acting because, x,y,z - its mainly just coincidence. Its patterns are very straightforward and allways "like the same"

I think this sums up what the problem with this guide is.

If you take the tradition 4 city opener you can apply it to most any game and it will be very consistent. While this guide is built on broken AI and cooked settings.

 

[Syailendra]

i'm wondering, he did tick off time vc as well, i assumed? So then it would be best to keep defending your land until you an every ai got in the future era, then your units won't be outeched anymore, right? Well... Thats what he keeps saying right, "NO NEEDS TO EXPLORE", but now it more seems like "DON'T YOU EVER, EVER, EVER FINDS ANY AI, OR THEY'LL COME BEFORE FUTURE ERA".

 

[Scorpionleader]

I take this guide as I take any guide. There is no way to play a game in which you will follow any guide to the letter. There are too many variables. I think the point was, if you really want to play on deity level, here's one way you can do it. Tabarnak's guide is great for me, but not perfect. I glean from it what I can, try some things out, but not everything works in a particular game. Still my favorite guide though.

A guide is just that. I'ts something to guide you if you're not sure of the way to go.

That being said: there's also nothing wrong with taking guides and discussing them intelligently. For the most-part everyone here is respectful. Some people take things too personally and feel that they need to attack. Sometimes they aren't so much of an attack, but an attempt at humor. Doesn't make them bad people. Everyone can have bad moments now and then. Including me. So if at some point I fly off the handle, and type something stupid, I will refer you to this.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I think this sums up what the problem with this guide is.

If you take the tradition 4 city opener you can apply it to most any game and it will be very consistent. While this guide is built on broken AI and cooked settings.

Obviously.

I'ts something to guide you if you're not sure of the way to go.

If it's guiding you in the wrong direction, it's not a good guide. For the most part this guide is simply misleading. If it was 'how to get deity achievement' guide, there was nothing to criticize (although there are still much easier ways to do it but oh well... ). It attempts to teach new players to become deity players. By rerolling, cooking settings and making sure AI can't win no matter what. That combined with ranting thread about AI being too weak the OP opened in GD makes it impossible to take him seriously.

 

[Vintage Port]

I take this guide as I take any guide. There is no way to play a game in which you will follow any guide to the letter. There are too many variables. I think the point was, if you really want to play on deity level, here's one way you can do it. Tabarnak's guide is great for me, but not perfect. I glean from it what I can, try some things out, but not everything works in a particular game. Still my favorite guide though.

A guide is just that. I'ts something to guide you if you're not sure of the way to go.

That being said: there's also nothing wrong with taking guides and discussing them intelligently. For the most-part everyone here is respectful. Some people take things too personally and feel that they need to attack. Sometimes they aren't so much of an attack, but an attempt at humor. Doesn't make them bad people. Everyone can have bad moments now and then. Including me. So if at some point I fly off the handle, and type something stupid, I will refer you to this.

I agree with your first points, you glean what you can but you have to adapt to each game depending on what it throws at you.

The reason the OP is getting flack is he failed to mention the "altered" settings. It wasn't until page 3 when we realized all VCs were off except domination. This is not the norm. Also playing on marathon speed. For sure some people like to play different settings but again not the norm. Then things like auto-workers (not optimal), no scouting, weird colour-screenshots and other things that just look "off" and well here we are on page 5 still "critiquing" this "guide".

The reality is, it has some holes and flaws in the guide.

 

[stii]

6) You abuse exploits to get gold.

To be fair doesn't almost everyone who plays on deity abuse the AI's willingness to buy things it really doesn't need?

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: There appears to be a bit of tension flying around in this thread, so it would be useful to remember the following:

• Trolling and flaming are strictly prohibited at CFC. If you think someone has posted a bad strategy, point out the flaws. But do not attack or ridicule the poster.
• If you see trolling or flaming, report it so it can be dealt with by moderators. Do not take the rules into your own hands. If you post an accusation that someone is a troll, then we regard that as trolling, as it is only likely to produce a negative reaction. Do not fall into this trap.
• Consequently, if you feel people are trolling or flaming you when you've posted a strategy here, report the offending posts instead of responding in kind.
• Remember that you're talking about a game, the primary purpose of which is to entertain. Getting worked up over it helps nobody, and is unlikely to enhance anyone's enjoyment of the game.

This is not to say that any particular posts in this thread have broken these guidelines, but rather that they would be useful for some people to keep in mind.

 

[tommynt]

now this moderator action is weired, who do some big blue post like "report the thread, post" when u r allready having a look onto a obvious troll thread?

Why not just close it instead of doing some blue post?

Like this its turning in circles - we report - u do a blue post - we report ....

Moderator Action: There are a few things wrong with this post. Firstly, public discussion of moderator action is strictly prohibited at CFC. If you dislike a moderator action, PM the moderator. The rules clearly spell this out as a condition of using this site.

Secondly, you've labelled the OP a troll. Whether you believe this to be true or not, doing so is considered trolling, as was just made clear in the post above.

This leads to the third problem. In the course of publicly discussion the moderator action, you have flagrantly ignored the content therein, preferring to poison the thread without any regard for the instructions given. Ignoring a moderator warning is strictly prohibited at CFC, a fortiori deliberately acting contrary to one.

Please ponder these problems during your week away from this site.
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