Hating Diety

[c4c6]

suggestions for making the AI smarter to make deity even harder.

It is not just about deity. I think, it has much greater impact on emperor and immortal, which gain another, less restricting (in terms of gameplay) alternative to rise difficulty.

I must agree that the game after the early game becomes boring. However, there is only one solution that would be acceptable from my point of view, which is just to develop a better AI and more especially a less passive AI.
If you give the AI more bonuses it only delays the point where the challenge disappears.

I agree with you 100% ... in an ideal world. There you receive the needed ingredients & tools.

The final words on the civ6 DLL sources are not spoken yet. Though I plan based on what can be done in SQL & Lua (prolonging the challenge). Probably 'develop a better AI' and 'a less passive AI' is just a nice idea, sadly.

So you can dress Barbie in and off whatever you like all day long, but she denies to learn any new tiny song or move. A limping beauty if you look close enough to break your heart.

Delaying the point where the challenge disappears is better than nothing.

 

[Nimbit]

I don't find deity to be very enjoyable. I do it once when a new version of Civ launches and then only when an achievement requires it. I prefer emperor because I can build whatever I want and push some things off for later. There's really no secret to deity other than practice. RNG will either bless you or make you hustle for the win once you get the proper build order down for your civ. Civ 6 seems to have less annoying content creators than many other games. Watch what they do in their games and then practice it.

Play whichever difficulty you want to though. 4X games are all about doing what you personally enjoy.

 

[Deadly Dog]

I have had the same problem as the OP with getting stuck between one difficulty level that is too easy and one that is too hard. I still won't say deity is easy, but I have to accept some responsibility and say despite being a career civ player there were many things I learned while getting smeared at the highest levels that I just didn't need to know with emperor, for example how just having a single galley or chariot will significantly boost the defense rating for all my cities.

Also, I never hesitate to "cook the books" in my favor with the Advanced setup screen. Crowded maps for Suleiman and Eleanor, water maps for Dido and Harald, etc. I can also use this to put the challenge back into emperor games, but I prefer having advantages on a more challenging level.

The game modes of course make deity level much more accessible to me. AI will burn off its faith on Voidsingers and kill off its units with Soothsayers for me, for example. Meanwhile the modes offer many avenues to early bonuses for me - governor promotions, switching golden age cards around, getting science and culture form volcanoes, etc.

Also playing on epic speed absolutely exaggerates both the pre-snowball difficulty and post-snowball ease of immortal/deity games, I find. Large maps are a must for me, anything smaller and the pacing is wonky.

 

[Victoria]

Playing deity games without manipulation, I found the civ you play makes a difference due to its start bias. For example playing a grassland civ means you are just so vulnerable at the start without defensive cover.
I have had quite a few discussion with people that struggle between levels where one of the main issues appears to be how to defend properly, especially fortifying on rough and letting them hit you as opposed to hitting them.
Standing in front of the enemy before they have declared, slowing up their approach to your city weirdly works to buy you time as well.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Playing deity games without manipulation, I found the civ you play makes a difference due to its start bias. For example playing a grassland civ means you are just so vulnerable at the start without defensive cover.
I have had quite a few discussion with people that struggle between levels where one of the main issues appears to be how to defend properly, especially fortifying on rough and letting them hit you as opposed to hitting them.
Standing in front of the enemy before they have declared, slowing up their approach to your city weirdly works to buy you time as well.

Yeah, abusing AI pathing and combat proficiency is one of the things that work well on the "micro" scale of things.
The AI will often try to take down a fortified warrior on hills/forest if he's directly in the way of attacking a city, causing the AI to take terrible trades with his own warriors.
Depending on the extent of "terrible trades" for the AI, this is effectively letting the player get away with far fewer units (sometimes even winning the battle outright), or buying a lot of time for further defensive preparations.
Careful tactical retreat still has to be made occasionally though, as the player can't always afford to lose that particular warrior.

It can sometimes get rather hilarious when you have a chokepoint outside your borders though (for instance a single entry path between two mountains or two coast lines, where all tiles are covered by rough terrain).
In such occasions you can effectively just fortify and the AI warriors won't have enough movement points to "skip over" your warrior, causing a massive traffic jam, delaying (or outright stopping) the surprise war because their warriors can't get close enough for the AI to meet whatever their internal criteria is for a quick surprise attack on your city.
Even if they do decide to surprise war, there is often no way they can break a single fortified warrior on rough terrain, if that warrior only has one angle of attack (unless they happen to have archers on hills nearby, then it can get scarier) as you'll often just heal up at a rate fast enough compared to them bringing him down.
Either way though, there aren't always chokepoints like this to abuse, so in general a player needs to be aware of combat strength values (fortified, different types of terriain) and attack angles (I personally try to never let more than 2 warriors be able attack my 1, as 2 is the number where they might actually overpower you depending on combat strength values and RNG elements such as damage taken/dealt and whether or not any units have an upgrade/heal available.
Then there's also the importance of planning an escape route for that fortified position, unless it's absolutely vital that the warrior buys enough time with a last stand (preferably taking massively favourable trades) on that particular tile.

Abusing all these "little things" (as well as diplomacy, effective scouting etc.) is what usually sets up the early Deity game, and identifying and using these "little things" effectively comes with experience.
Fortunately though, these things flow rather natural once one gets used to them.
That being said though, your example with flat grassland starts absolutely applies, and in such positions it can get very dicey on Deity if an aggressive neighbour is nearby.